AGA Today
Vacationing Bosses Should
Take A Break and Let Staffers Step Up
By Carol Hymowitz
From The Wall Street Journal Online
August 22, 2007
The president of
a small manufacturing company in Cleveland told his top marketing
manager that he wasn't going to be reachable during a recent weeklong
safari in Africa. But midway through the week, the manager received a
voice-mail message from his boss inquiring whether he had completed a
particular assignment -- and telling him which task to tackle next.
"I felt he didn't
trust that I knew how to do my job," the marketing manager says. "When
he got back from vacation and I asked how he'd managed to get a
cell phone signal in the jungle, he confessed he'd programmed the
voice-mail message to me before he left."
Fed up with being
micromanaged, the manager quit shortly afterward, taking a new job.
It's vacation
season -- but many executives not only limit themselves to breaks of
just a few days, they also continue to check in with employees and issue
directives from yachts, beaches and mountain resorts. Their refusal to
turn off their cell phones and BlackBerrys means they are never relieved
of work pressures no matter how remote or luxurious their vacation
destinations. In addition, those executives who can't disengage from the
office and delegate authority undermine employees' confidence to make
decisions and be creative.
"The most
successful executives presume that employees will act in the best
interests of their company and to their full potentials -- and don't
need to check in with them all the time," says Michael Mankins, a
partner at consultant Bain & Co. "Those who can't step away and trust
that decisions can be made without them never get the best work out of
subordinates."
Lee Macenczak,
executive vice president of sales, marketing and customer service at
Delta Air Lines, realized this when he traveled to Israel last month
with his wife and two daughters for his first weeklong vacation in
several years. During his absence, he expected his six direct reports
and thousands of employees to handle the daily crush of meetings and
decisions.
"It's important
for me to spend time with my family and recharge, especially now that
Delta has emerged from Chapter 11," he says, "and I have a great team of
high performers who know perfectly well how to take care of our
customers and operations."
He admits,
however, that he had to restrain himself from sending and answering
emails. "I checked my BlackBerry, but tried not to work on everything --
and came home to a lot of unanswered emails," he says.
Michael
Bonsignore, retired chief executive of Honeywell, thinks executives
should fear being indispensable a lot more than fear not being needed.
"Executives go to all this trouble to recruit and train people, so they
should be able to really get away sometimes and nurture the management
structure they've created by leaving decisions to others," he says.
He sought to do
this when he was CEO at Honeywell -- by taking off three days at a time
several times a year to pursue his hobbies of saltwater fly fishing and
boating.
"My view of
vacation was leaving work behind -- and trying to preserve the essence
of my inner self," says Mr. Bonsignore. And because he maintained his
interests outside of business throughout his career, he believes he can
now enjoy his retirement more than other former CEOs who focused only on
work.
He acknowledges
that technology is making it increasingly difficult for executives to
separate themselves from work and from their staffs even for a day. On
fishing trips to remote areas in British Columbia, Mr. Bonsignore has
observed executives. They "step off the float plane onto the dock, and
the first thing they do is make sure their cell phone and BlackBerry are
working," he says. The fact that they can connect so easily to their
offices and staffs from anyplace in the world makes it harder to choose
not to engage.
Dan Amos, CEO of
Aflac, the Georgia-based insurance company, says he was coached not to
micromanage in a seminar he took more than a decade ago. But he has
learned along the way that some compromise is necessary for top
executives, who can hardly afford to completely disengage from work.
"You may say you
don't want to be reached -- but you're expected by employees, colleagues
and superiors to be able to be reached," he says.
When he took a
vacation to the Arctic Circle with his son a few years ago, he took
along a satellite phone on which he could be contacted. No one called,
"but if there had been an earthquake in Japan" -- where Aflac is the No.
1 insurer -- "or some other cataclysmic event, I'd need to know," he
says.
He believes there
is a plus side to always carrying a BlackBerry, although he refrains
from calling the office the minute he lands somewhere. Having the
connection, he says, means he doesn't feel anxious or guilty for taking
a long weekend, because he can blend work and leisure.
Still, he says he
keeps himself in check: "I stick to a rule that says, 'You can call me,
and I may call to do business about an issue on my mind, but I won't
call in just to find out what is going on all the time.' "
Email your
comments to
inthelead@wsj.com.