JULY 2006
ELIMINATING GUILT ABOUT "BUSINESS INCLUDED" VACATIONS
By Tony Mulkern
It is summertime, the height of the vacation season. The arrival of hot weather also signals the appearance of that hardy summer perennial—articles scolding executives for their lack of vacation time or for continuing to work while on vacation.
These shaming admonitions usually come from psychiatrists or psychologists, whose clinical work allegedly includes helping patients to overcome their guilt and shame. Typically these writers seem to be in private practice, and evidently, when they take a vacation, they simply leave an outgoing message on their voice mail for any frantically needy patients that call in saying something like the following: “I am on vacation for three weeks. In an emergency, call my colleague, a complete stranger to you, (name and number) or the suicide hotline (number). Have a nice day!”
I know of few entrepreneurs or executives who feel they have a similar luxury to completely leave their businesses behind. Why?
For one thing, emergencies occur. Critical junctures in the business can happen at any time. A key account is about to go south, and only the CEO/owner can save it. Top talent may have submitted a resignation, and any counter offer must me made now. The regulators just threatened to shut down the business, the lease on the building is being pulled, fraud has been uncovered, a patent has been stolen, there has been a natural or man made disaster. The list of actual cases could get pretty long.
It is true that an executive who has a highly competent, experienced, and committed team with years of experience working together effectively can afford to be out of touch for weeks at a time. Getting to this point, however, is the achievement of many years of strenuous team development, something to aspire to, and few entrepreneurs or executives are at that stage at any given time. Some never are. It is just as likely that if you can be absent from an executive position for two or more weeks with no contact and no disruption, either you have no real job at all or you are underutilizing your potential.
For entrepreneurs, it is often said that the business is “their baby.” If a couple decided they needed to take a vacation without their young children, no one would advise them to forget the family and remain out of contact for this entire time. The advice is just as unrealistic for entrepreneurs.
So what is an entrepreneur/CEO supposed to do about vacations in the years before he or she has the freedom to explore the Amazon or climb Mt. Everest, oblivious to life back at the business?
First, stop feeling guilty about taking work with you. If you find your work fulfilling, it is not something to get away from; it is with you always. It is if someone told a great painter or poet, “When you take time off, do not make any sketches or notes on what you experience and how this can figure in your future works.” The suggestion would demonstrate a complete ignorance of the artistic process and the complete absorption the artist has in it. The creative entrepreneur is no different in principle.
 The standard advice from psychologists and consultants about vacation seems to set up a false set of options: either leave work behind—become oblivious—or remain in touch with the workplace and be obsessive—thereby showing how much in need of “life balance” you are. Are obliviousness and obsessiveness the only alternatives? I think not.
In fact, the standard advice may even discourage taking time off. If bringing work with me is essential to my firm’s health and survival, but that means it is not really a vacation, why bother?
The following suggestions are intended to help you take a guilt-free vacation that you can thoroughly enjoy, without worry that your life’s work and family’s legacy may be falling apart in your absence.
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Plan your day or week of return before your departure, by telling those who report to you what projects you want completed upon your return, what you want to see, and whom you want to meet with, and when.
- Let your direct reports clearly know when it is OKAY to contact you and when they MUST contact you while on vacation.
- Also let your direct reports know when they need not or should not contact you. This forces you to decide on your level of trust in their competence, commitment, and buy-in to the firm’s mission and values.
- Leave your itinerary and contact numbers, such as hotels on the tour, cruise ship satellite phone number, etc. Consider a cell phone that can be accessed internationally. In other words, be available.
- Check e-mail regularly, daily if possible, to scan for critical issues. If something can wait, let it wait.
- Make an unexpected call or two, during a down time or lull, to show that you mean it when you say you are available if needed. Plan some penetrating questions to ask, even if you do not expect or want the answers then.
- Don’t just "relax" around the pool or beach the whole time. Also, health permitting, engage in some totally absorbing, adventuresome activity. Whether it is white river rafting, hiking to see the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, or taking a mule ride to the floor of the Grand Canyon and back on narrow, precipitous trails—plan something that is so mind-focusing that it will not allow you to think of work.
- For the times you are lying around the pool, take along some reading that will provide inspiration in your business. This might be the latest management book, a biography of a great historical leader, or a book of personal or spiritual insight that an internal voice has been nagging you to read.
- Scan a good newspaper every couple of days or get the Wall Street Journal online. Save interesting but non-urgent articles for your return.
- Appreciate and be grateful for the fact that your life’s work is something of such significance and interest that you cannot leave it totally behind.
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If a few days or week into the vacation you find yourself craving some extended time with no possible contact, turn off the phone and e-mail, etc. for a while and let those back at the office know you are doing so. You might find you can afford—and tolerate—more of such time than you thought.
- After returning, evaluate the effectiveness of your vacation contact plan. Were you contacted when you should have been? When you initiated contact did you get the information you needed? Were subordinates as effective as they should have been? Are they worthy of more or less trust than you thought? Sometimes subordinates say they are more productive when the boss is away. If this seems to be true, ask yourself what you might be doing to stand in their way when you are present.
If you want to take more than a couple of weeks at a time, say to travel to the international space station, and be really out of touch, think of this as a sabbatical rather than a vacation, and plan it several years ahead.
Meanwhile, have well-deserved, guilt-free buenas vacaciones!
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Copyright, Mulkern Associates, 2006
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