There’s something lovely about coming back from holiday and being told, “Thank goodness you’re back, we’ve missed you.” It makes you feel valued and important.
Before you enjoy that warm glow for too long though, it’s worth asking exactly why they missed you. Did they really miss you, or did they miss the person who makes all the decisions, answers all the questions and sorts things out when nobody else knows what to do? Because those are two very different things.
Was your holiday actually a holiday?
There’s another clue too. How much did you hear from your team while you were away?
If your phone was constantly pinging with “Sorry to bother you, but…” messages; if you were checking emails over breakfast or making “just one quick call” before heading out for the day, then however lovely the weather was, you weren’t really on holiday. You’d simply moved your office somewhere sunnier.
Sometimes things happen that genuinely need your attention, and I’m not suggesting you throw your phone in the sea the minute you leave the country, but…if your team regularly needs you to answer questions, make decisions or solve problems while you’re away, that’s telling you something about the business you’ve built.
Too much still depends on you!
What if they didn’t miss you?
Now consider the other possibility. You went away for two weeks and hardly heard a peep. The team got on with it: customers were looked after, decisions were made, and problems that came up were dealt with. The standards you expect were maintained, and when you came back, there wasn’t a queue of people outside your door waiting for answers.
That’s worth feeling pretty pleased about, because your team not needing you for two weeks means you’ve done a really great job in making it clear who’s responsible for what. Your team know how things are done and what good looks like; they’ve been trained properly and trusted to use what they know rather than checking everything with you.
That’s a strong team, and a much stronger business.
The two-week test
It’s a useful question to ask yourself, even with no holiday planned. If you disappeared for two weeks tomorrow, what would your team have to wait for you coming back to decide? What would stop, and where would standards slip or things simply not get dealt with?
Whatever’s just popped into your head is worth paying attention to, because that’s probably where you’ve still got a gap, between what you know and what your team know, or between how you want things done and what actually happens without you there.
That gap is only going to get bigger as you scale.
So next time you come back from holiday, the best welcome might be “Lovely to have you back, everything’s been great.” A far better sign that your business is ready to scale is hearing “Lovely to have you back, everything’s been great,” even if it gives your ego less of a boost.
