Working with a US team from Europe: a practical timetable

The shape of the day

From London, the US east coast comes online at 2pm and the west coast at 5pm. That produces three distinct blocks, and the teams that work well treat them differently.

From Berlin or Paris, shift each row an hour later; from Madrid the same, since Spain runs on Central European Time despite its longitude.

The mistake most people make

Filling the European morning with internal meetings, then discovering the only slot that works with America is also the only slot left for real work. The morning is the most protected time a European in a transatlantic team has. Spend it on the things that need concentration.

What the west coast costs

San Francisco starts at 5pm London time. There is no version of that which is comfortable, so decide deliberately:

• Weekly, not daily. One late call a week is sustainable; three is not.
• Rotate it. Alternate between a late European finish and an early American start.
• Record and summarise. Anyone who cannot make it should lose nothing but the conversation.
• Keep it short. A 30-minute call at 6pm is a different proposition from a 90-minute one.

The transition weeks

Twice a year the US and EU change clocks on different dates, and for about three weeks in March the American day starts an hour earlier in European terms. Standing 2pm calls become 1pm calls for the people who typed the time by hand. Put a reminder in the calendar for the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November.

Written by default

The single largest gain is not scheduling at all — it is deciding that status, reviews and most decisions happen in writing. Once that holds, the overlap stops being a bottleneck and becomes a bonus.

A worked week

Here is a structure that holds up in practice for a European working with a US east-coast team:

The pattern is deliberate: mornings never contain a meeting that could have been written down, and Friday afternoons stay clear so the US has a documented state to pick up.

The hidden tax on European teams

In a transatlantic team, the European side absorbs most of the schedule cost — their evening is the American morning. That is invisible in any metric and very visible in retention after a year. Two mitigations work:

• Cap late calls. A hard limit of one or two per week, enforced by the manager rather than the individual.
• Bank the mornings. Explicitly protect 09:00–12:00 as meeting-free, so the trade feels balanced.

Handover notes that actually get read

A short written handover at the end of the European day is the highest-leverage habit in this setup. Keep it to four lines: what moved, what is blocked, what needs a decision, and what is promised to a customer with a deadline. Anything longer stops being read within a fortnight.

If the team spans the west coast too

Accept that daily live contact with San Francisco is not available from Europe without someone working late. Structure it as a weekly touchpoint plus asynchronous everything else, and put the recording and summary discipline in place before it is needed.