Delegation Through Vacation
During my first few years of being a founder, I was always on. I’d take vacations, but really I was constantly checking emails, jumping on calls, checking metrics and more. It was less a vacation than remote work from a vacation spot.
A couple years ago, I decided to completely disconnect during my vacation. No email, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, or even Medium. I put up an out of office message and gave my team instructions on how to contact me in the case of an emergency. It should come as no surprise that my vacations became more fulfilling, relaxing and rejuvenating.
But there was an unexpected benefit: It forced me to delegate and create better systems that enabled our company to grow fast.
Like many entrepreneurs, delegation didn’t come naturally to me. There were plenty of things I foolishly thought only I could do or that I could do better than anyone else.
In preparation for my first off-the-grid vacation, I needed to identify all the processes that I was necessary for and remove myself from them. At the time I was still getting customer service emails and phone calls, single-handedly monitoring many key metrics, and approving small changes to purchase orders. I asked people on my team to fill in for me while I was gone.
When I got back, I found my team had handled all the day-to-day activities I was previously doing better than I did so I permanently delegated to them. It freed up my time to work on growing the business.
Taking time off of work gave me more time to work on what mattered.
It’s a continual process. Our company’s been doubling in size every year for the past couple of years, so my job as CEO is constantly changing. Every year I create and take on new tasks and processes to help the company grow. The default option is to keep doing them for too long. Taking regular off-the-grid vacations switches the default: Any day-to-day activity must be delegated before the next vacation, and resuming the activity upon return must be a conscious choice.
In preparation for my most recent vacation, we set up a framework for making important sales decisions on large enterprise deals without me that we continue to use. It’s since allowed us to move faster and was something we should have done even had I not gone on vacation. Without the vacation though, we might have gone another six months until we realized this bottleneck was really slowing us down and addressed it.
At Muck Rack and the Shorty Awards, we’ve instituted a company-wide policy to take off-the-grid vacations, and to find a way to delegate work before leaving. It forces everyone to create systems, document processes, share knowledge and delegate.
Delegation through vacations is different than abdication. Abdication is the equally bad counterpart to micromanaging. You should never pass on a responsibility without first training, creating a system, giving feedback and monitoring results. Taking an off-the-grid vacation requires planning and careful thought into how operations you’re involved in can continue without you.
Used correctly, delegation through vacation is a forcing function: you must fully empower the person taking over for you in advance of your leave, get out of their way (by being almost unavailable!), and monitor out the results.
If you want your company to grow faster, take a real vacation!
ps: We’re hiring!