Don’t let your organization leaderless unless you want to be jobless

For whatever reason you are distracted from your day to day duties (a merger, an acquisition, a family emergency) and you haven’t been in a position to attend to those duties. This is fine if it is a short hiatus (less than 3 weeks), but anything longer than that you need to make sure that somebody is tending shop. You have to groom your team to work without you for a while or designate one or more people to fill in your role. If you provide no leadership you are creating a vacuum where people are making decisions and launching projects because they sound good.


Let’s be clear, your team has to be able to function without you for short periods – and they should be able to provide their own direction (after all, their resumes do state that they are entrepreneurial, self-starters and self motivated). But the longer your absence, the more decisions start to pile up and change the direction; suddenly you have a new and emerging strategy that you are still accountable for.