Early in my career, I went to Paris with friends. At the time, I was helping run a company that went from $5.9MM to $15MM in 18 months. All the while, we were raising $5MM from VC and we had gotten ourselves $1.7MM in debt.
Every day, I drank from the fire hose of busyness.
In fact, I was so busy, I didn’t have my passport the day before we left. I was all stressed out.
Thank God Philly has a passport office. I got an emergency appointment. Ran to Camden to grab my birth certificate. Didn’t know I needed pictures. Grabbed pictures from the enterprising business next to the passport office. And picked that book of gold up the next morning on my way to the airport.
I wish I could tell you that Paris was the trip of a lifetime. It should have been.
But, it wasn’t.
All I could think about was work.
Before email, cell phones and text messages (Jesus that feels old), I organized two call times each day. 2pm and 7pm Paris time.
And every day, people lined up to have questions answered.
If I’m being brutally honest, it fed the ego of my twenty-six year old self.
But, it was horrible for my health. Terrible for my mindset.
And worse yet, downright awful for the company and my people.
(**Sigh** Reminder of hard lessons learned)
Here’s the hard truth: I didn’t build a team that could excel while I was gone. I held all the cards. I held all the answers. Even at a fast-moving growth rate, I could still impose my will on the company. I chose to make myself bigger than the business.
And, so I spent nearly two hours a day talking to my people from France. They were not prepared to succeed in my absence. And, it was my fault – not theirs.
The additional penance for my leadership transgressions? I made the calls inside a steamy, stinky public phone booth that just happened to be right next to the street level public toilet. In July.
Bad leadership = No break (Read that again)
Ultimately, my bad leadership led to a tax I couldn’t pay. I couldn’t take a break. I lived in relentless stress. Six months later, I found myself on a hospital gurney clutching my chest. (We’ll save that full story for another day.)
It is critical that you refresh and renew as a leader. Trust me: You are not invincible.
As you head to the holiday season, after the last two years, you need a break.
But, let’s also face facts: If you are the bottleneck in your business, you can’t take a real break. How do you know? If you’re having to answer day-to-day questions on your break, you are the bottleneck. Why does that happen?
Your people aren’t aligned enough, trained enough, clear enough on systems, have access to critical information nor understand how resources are allocated on opportunities to achieve objectives.
Your people aren’t setup to take bold, decisive action to go win. Stop expecting them to do so.
Awareness always precedes action. The first step is recognizing this is a problem. If you’ve ever uttered to yourself after answering a call on vacation, “My people can’t make a decision to save their lives,” then you can do better.
It’s not your people; it’s you. And the lack of clarity you’ve created. It’s why I’m putting it on your radar. You can do better. And that’s energizing and empowering.
If you feel rising anxiety as you’re about to leave the office on vacation, let’s fix it in 2022. It takes work, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Au revoir!
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