Work life balance and the negative impact of organizational heroes

Show me an organization that has members who can't unplug their cell phones for a week, and I'll point out the dysfunctions of the organization. I know, I'm using strong words. I can back this up with experience, so please read on.

So many people don't take vacation, and even if they take it, they spend a large portion of their time scanning their e-mail. Look around you the next time you are relaxing somewhere. Set your crackberry down, and actually look at people. Many are staring at their devices, ingesting some highly important communication related to world peace, or anxiously pecking at the lilliputian keyboard, firing off an e-mail about global crop shortages while sitting next to the pool in a swim suit.

More than half of the working population in America don't use their vacation days. A vacation for many workers is just an opportunity to work from somewhere exotic. What's with that? There aren't any do-overs for a missed life.

Look closely. No crackberry here.

In a previous blog post, I wrote of how I served four years in an Army Reserve unit that trained the leadership of National Guard and Reserve units. We were in essence consultants, tasked with helping units become better at making war - before they actually have to make war.

We had a technique that was always effective in identifying a broken unit. We looked for the hero. That one person who could do it all, and was counted on to do it all. We watched her run around the operations center, receiving incoming problems, as she fired back the solutions. Almost every unit had one of her. She was easy to see. Everyone lined up to feed from her energy and intellect.

We'd usually wait for a critical period, and we'd kill her. Just like that. Dead. It was a simulated death, but the impact was pretty much always the same. There'd be loud protests, appeals to our good senses, and sometimes outright begging. I've heard stories that some people would pray for a miracle, but I never witnessed this. We'd take the person off-site, get them some of that good two day old Army coffee, and not let them back into the operations center. The operations inevitably and quickly came to a grinding halt, and the units often failed in accomplishing their mission.

What they gained from this failure was knowledge. Every unit we did this to, learned a valuable lesson. If you don't have someone ready to step in for each key person, then you were setting yourself up for failure. Attrition planning isn't something to do when a retirement is announced months in advance. It's part of a good organizational plan.

This lesson also applies to you. Yes, you. The person with the crackberry, sitting by the pool, banging out an e-mail when you should be rubbing sun block on your partner's back, or teaching your child how to do a proper cannonball into the pool. If you are so important that you can't get away from work for a week or two without checking e-mail, you are setting your organization up for failure. That's right. You are not a good team player if your work can't be covered while you are out. Taking an unplugged vacation is a controlled test to see if your team is competent. If they contact you, then you may need to spend more time training them on your return.

The reality is that within a few days of your permanent departure (which will happen), your responsibilities will be absorbed by other people, and you will be blamed for whatever is wrong for as long as this is reasonable. Eventually your e-mail address will return an error to the sender. Your life at the organization will end. In six months, few will remember what you did at the organization. Your favorite stapler will have a new home.

There. How's that for perspective? Now go ahead, book that vacation. In fact, take two weeks in a row. Tell everyone you're headed to some island with an unpronounceable name, and even if they had Internet, they have no electricity, so there's no way to reach you. Your job will be there when you return. This can be a validation that you are great team player, and that the people around you are competent enough to keep things running while you are out.

No one is irreplaceable. Not even you. Now go prove it. Maybe while you're on that island, you'll rediscover how nice it feels to rub sunblock on your partner, or have it rubbed on you. Stranger things have happened outside of the office.

What is the longest vacation you've taken? Have you ever lost a job for taking vacation?

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