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CIO Jacqueline Guichelaar makes colleagues feel like a priority wherever they are.

This Cisco exec has figured out an ingenious hack for collaborating across time zones

[Illustration: Tim McDonagh]

BY Katharine Schwab and Jacqueline Guichelaar3 minute read

A large population of my direct reports are in the U.S., but I’ve also got people in the U.K., and in the Asia-Pacific region. And because people aren’t flying anymore, we’re doing all our strategy sessions every quarter, every month, every week on video calls. So if you want to do a 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. session, that [means people in the U.K. are] working from 5 p.m. till midnight. Because I’m so conscious of that, I’m forcing myself to sync up with my Asia-Pacific colleagues late in the evening, or my U.K. colleagues [early] in the morning.

I’ve gotten into a routine of doing it. Because I don’t think it’s fair that we work [according to] U.S. time zones. We’re a global company. Every individual on the team is important, regardless of what time zone they’re in. We’re in the middle of producing a new governance model [with] meeting times that we can share between regions so that people don’t have to work crazy hours just to stay in sync. We haven’t quite cracked it, but we’re definitely adjusting the way we work.

Time she gets up

Between 5 and 5:30 a.m.

First thing she does in the morning

“Take a couple of deep breaths and reflect on how lucky I am. I do then turn to my phone.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katharine Schwab is the deputy editor of Fast Company's technology section. Email her at kschwab@fastcompany.com and follow her on Twitter @kschwabable More


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