by Lisette Sutherland | Jun 30, 2015 | Community Management, Employee Engagement, Online meetings, Remote Working
In college, I was a member of a student group where each meeting began with a short opening question. I didn’t know anything about meeting facilitation at the time, but I remember liking that part of the meeting. Fast forward to when I became a manager leading a...
by Lisette Sutherland | Apr 20, 2015 | Experiments, Podcast
Just like the time I went completely offline for ten days, doing something a little extreme has given me unexpected insight. I took the month of April off and decided not to schedule any meetings, interviews, presentations, or workshops. I needed to focus on finishing...
by Lisette Sutherland | Apr 7, 2015 | Experiments, Podcast
I have taken the month of April off from scheduling meetings, giving presentations and workshops, and doing interviews. The plan is to focus primarily on writing the book: Stories Of Remote Teams Doing Great Things Because I’ve put the interviews on hold, I...
by Lisette Sutherland | Mar 24, 2015 | Remote Working
I just returned from 10 days of vacation. This time, I felt I really needed the time off. My boyfriend, Florian, and I name all of our trips before we go – and from the beginning, this vacation was called the “Grumpy burnout tour”. We had both been working crazy...
by Lisette Sutherland | Mar 5, 2015 | Remote Working, Retrospectives, Uncategorized
Retrospectives are meetings held at regularly scheduled intervals where teams can reflect on how things are going to be more effective. There are many styles, but some typical questions are: What is going well? What could have gone better? What have we learned? What...
by Lisette Sutherland | Feb 19, 2015 | Experiments
I’ve been battling to lose 5kg for years. Now, I know I’m not fat, but what I want is to be lean. I exercise regularly: running 35-40km/week, climbing and yoga once a week, skiing and hiking all winter and summer. I’ve tried lots of different diets:...
by Lisette Sutherland | Jan 25, 2015 | Online meetings, Remote Working, Telepresence
In order to solve the issue of bad online meetings, we need to address the specific pain points that we are having on our team. Does someone have a bad connection? That has to be fixed. Do we need headsets? Lets solve that. If someone has bad etiquette, that also...
by Lisette Sutherland | Dec 9, 2014 | Remote Working
I recently worked with a freelancer who did not pay the invoice I sent. It’s now been more than 60 days. After several emails and some gentle shaming on social media, I received an email promising that the check would be sent soon. This is not an isolated...
by Lisette Sutherland | Nov 3, 2014 | Interviews, Podcast, Remote Working
It all started innocently enough. In early 2013, I started doing in-person interviews with people who were working remotely. Because of my work with Happy Melly, I was using Google Hangouts extensively and it seemed like the obvious way to continue forward as I could...
by Lisette Sutherland | Oct 21, 2014 | Collaboration, Remote Working, Speaking, Telepresence
I discovered telepresence by happy accident. A friend of mine in the robotics industry sent me a link to the Suitable Technologies website after a conversation at dinner one night. Fascinated, I signed up on their mailing list and started learning more about it. When...
