what is vacation anyway?
is it truly time off, a leave of absence, a sojourn?
or is it the only time you have to read through your mail, run your errands and clean your house?
does vacation still mean reading your work email?
does vacation include googletalking with colleagues about upcoming projects?
if you work where i do, then it’s not so much a respite from anything as it is your chance to scurry around catching up with life, already in progress.
as i go around meeting decision-makers of all types - IT, shipping managers, small biz owners, and so on - i keep hearing about how much more people have been tasked to do. how much more responsibility, how much more pressure, how many more tasks. i talk to senior level decision makers who yearn for more time to think about the broader business, to be strategic, to think.
and i think, yeah, man. i hear you.
while the perceived need to do more and more, and the technological bandwidth to do more and more, have both increased, it is your people who suffer.
experienced, senior, strategic and creative people have been rendered project managers - very expensive project managers. they are expected to ‘go’ and ‘do’ - one of my clients even has termed their next steps “go dos.”
thinking is a luxury. strategy happens on your own time.
what business is all about today is going and doing. don’t take too much time to think about it; don’t let anything slip through the cracks; don’t expect support structures to rise up to bolster this hyper-productivity. and certainly don’t expect to be able to see a project through, yourself, from beginning to end.
we’re in the piecing business now. i hem the sleeves; you attach it to the body; she sews on the buttons; he does the pressing; and so on.
there is no long view.
in the marketing trade, CMOs now only last about 18 months. they have no time or incentive to plan ahead.
in my business, we last a lot longer it seems, but our time is allocated according to what we call ‘field work’. i am busy and productive when i am out in the world interviewing people. time in the office thinking and writing about what i learned is ‘down time’. time setting up another project, catching up on expenses, planning one’s calendar - that’s called ‘admin time’… and the mgmt resents the use of it.
these are not really new issues. these are common problems in start-ups that start to gain momentum. constantly just behind in resources and staffing to support the demand for your services or widgets. how is it, then, that well established companies, and those who have been mid-size for some time, never crest that wave and move into something more planned?