Here’s what I’ve learned from being at the start of the work day in an organization with offices in 135 countries:
- Mondays are good for thinking, provided you’ve cleared that Friday evening email tail, as most of your colleagues are asleep.
- Be considerate. Among the locations requiring significant conferencing contortions is east Asia and the US West Coast. On the plus side, there is no meeting time that isn’t equally inconvenient, so at least there is mutual appreciation for all involved. If you’re in Europe or Africa, lucky you!
- Be conscious of the timezone implications of the meetings you accept. I’m the only one to blame for having a day that starts at 5:30am to be telepresent in an event in New York and ends at midnight on a videoconference with Geneva and San Francisco. Everyone else will get their sleep in the hours in between while I’ll fit in a regular day. Ouch!
- Be disciplined. My office’s official working hours are 7:30 to 3:45. It’s so easy to keep working on into the evening and put in 12-16 hour days as the rest of the time zones come online and begin their work day and the emails start flowing in.
- Be collaborative. Make the time and make use of the superb selection of tools that help distributed teams keep aligned, productive and social. It’s possible to be asynchronous, remote and very connected.
What have you discovered?
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