“There’s no single playbook for distributed teams – you have to write it together, one learning at a time.” – Katharina Alt, Head of Atlassian Services, Seibert Media.
LISTEN NOW → Episode #8 is live on all major podcast platforms: Apple Podcast | Spotify | Youtube
Inside this episode
How Seibert Media scaled from 110 to 500+ people – and what broke along the way.
Why mergers across Germany, Austria, Denmark, France & the US forced a fresh look at meeting habits and information flow.
Loom, Atlassian VO, and other async tools Katharina’s team swear by to keep 45 consultants (and counting) in sync.
Turning Atlassian’s ever-expanding “system of work” into a massive business opportunity for partners and customers alike.
Building culture without borders – why a two-day in-person kickoff is still worth the budget.
From Confluence Roots to a Consulting Powerhouse
Katharina’s nine-year journey mirrors Seibert Media’s own transformation: from a Confluence-centric intranet shop to a strategic Atlassian consultancy with 50 specialists tackling enterprise cloud migrations, governance, and org-change training. She explains how focusing on customer outcomes over features helped them ride Atlassian’s pivot from servers to cloud – without leaving long-time admins behind.
Hyper-Growth, Mergers & the “One-Hour Weekly”
When five regional partners merged under the Seibert umbrella, chat channels exploded and calendars overflowed. Katharina’s first fix? A single one-hour weekly where every topic – big or small – lands, drastically reducing ad-hoc calls and Slack pings. The format wasn’t perfect, but it sparked today’s squad-level dailies plus a department-wide monthly that scales to 45+ consultants.
Tool Stack: Loom, VO & Atlassian’s Teamwork Graph
For Katharina, shared context beats shared time zones. Quick Loom videos replace update meetings, complete with auto-transcripts and language translation for global colleagues. Atlassian VO’s cross-tool search then stitches those clips together with Confluence pages, Jira issues, and Google docs – so no one cares where knowledge lives, only that it’s instantly findable.
Culture over Coordinates
Even the best tech can’t substitute human connection. That’s why Katharina insists every new subsidiary sends teammates to Wiesbaden for a two-day kickoff: work sessions by day, dinner and a party by night. “Meeting once in person makes every later video call easier,” she says.
Why This Episode Matters
As Atlassian re-defines issues as work items and rolls out dozens of new apps, many teams feel overwhelmed. Katharina argues that this very complexity is a goldmine for solution partners who translate possibilities into results . Whether you’re leading a newly remote squad or advising enterprises on cloud strategy, her lessons on async communication, cultural empathy, and continuous enablement will resonate.
Tune in & subscribe
Ready to level-up your own distributed-team playbook?
Hit play on Episode #8 and subscribe to Bring Your Own Directions wherever you get your podcasts: Apple Podcast | Spotify | Youtube
What’s your take on distributed teams? Share your thoughts in the comments.
