How to get your team using AI | Avani Prabhakar, Chief People & AI Enablement Officer of Atlassian
Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.
In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Avani Prabhakar, Chief People and AI Enablement Officer of Atlassian, the company that builds teamwork and collaboration tools for knowledge workers. Avani explains why Atlassian treats AI as a people transformation rather than a tech one, and why deploying AI turned out to be the easy part.
We dig into the AI wallet every employee gets, why she monitors token usage instead of rewarding it, how Atlassian defines an AI super user, the Teamwork Graph context layer that saved about 48% of tokens, and why she warns against AI mandates and ROI-first business cases. Her advice for leaders: when you don’t have the answer, say “I don’t know.”
Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at contact@thenextweb.com.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:16 What Atlassian does
00:44 Why AI is a people transformation
04:24 AI rollout mistakes to avoid
08:35 Token maxing and AI wallets
10:17 Bringing IT and people teams together
11:28 What blocks AI adoption
13:27 Why a written culture helps AI
15:01 Team Anywhere and mandates
16:03 Becoming Atlassian's customer zero
17:04 Avani's path from GE to Atlassian
19:27 Don't pick a career out of fear
21:12 How Atlassian hires for values
22:20 Keeping people engaged
In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Avani Prabhakar, Chief People and AI Enablement Officer of Atlassian, the company that builds teamwork and collaboration tools for knowledge workers. Avani explains why Atlassian treats AI as a people transformation rather than a tech one, and why deploying AI turned out to be the easy part.
We dig into the AI wallet every employee gets, why she monitors token usage instead of rewarding it, how Atlassian defines an AI super user, the Teamwork Graph context layer that saved about 48% of tokens, and why she warns against AI mandates and ROI-first business cases. Her advice for leaders: when you don’t have the answer, say “I don’t know.”
Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at contact@thenextweb.com.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:16 What Atlassian does
00:44 Why AI is a people transformation
04:24 AI rollout mistakes to avoid
08:35 Token maxing and AI wallets
10:17 Bringing IT and people teams together
11:28 What blocks AI adoption
13:27 Why a written culture helps AI
15:01 Team Anywhere and mandates
16:03 Becoming Atlassian's customer zero
17:04 Avani's path from GE to Atlassian
19:27 Don't pick a career out of fear
21:12 How Atlassian hires for values
22:20 Keeping people engaged
