How to Sabbatical

When I hear the word sabbatical I think of my college professor who took a semester of sabbatical following seven years as a tenured faculty member.  He traveled to England for several months to further his study. I always wondered how much time was spent furthering and how much was consumed visiting Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle and the great pubs that can be found throughout London. I’ll never know but perhaps it was a bit of both.

I recall clergy members of my church going on sabbatical at least twice. I pictured them spending months in a monastery setting, praying, reading and contemplating life’s vicissitudes as they say. 

As a leader in the finishing space, have you taken a sabbatical? Perhaps it is time.

Until recently I had never even thought of taking one. In my mind, sabbaticals were reserved for academics and people of the cloth.  However, in need of a break and with a light week on my calendar late one August I put the words “Strategic Sabbatical” across the entire week. What started as an attempt to put some space between myself and the onslaught of business problems that seem to plague each September was so valuable that it ended in a practice I have continued ever since and will into the future. 

First, let’s be clear that it’s not reasonable for most of us to take a three- or six-month sabbatical. Business moves way too fast and our resources are too thin to get away with that. But most could pull off a week. The first step is to clear your calendar for the week well in advance and be maniacal about not letting anything on it. That means no regular staff or production meetings, no customer meetings, no employee meetings, no networking coffee with your friend’s kid who is looking for a job. Nothing. When I’m on my one-week sabbatical I check and return email regularly and I return phone calls but that’s it. Nothing else. All week.

Each day of my sabbatical I rise early, just as I would if I was working. I walk two miles to get the blood and my thoughts flowing. I have breakfast and then find a place to think. My garden, a coffee shop, the beach, a park are all great examples.

Following several hours of thinking and journaling, I find a place for lunch. Thereafter I get my body moving again. This year paddleboarding, bodyboarding, swimming and hiking were the physical activities of choice.  Then on to several more hours of thinking, followed by dinner with the family, and then a good bourbon while gazing out over the lake or sitting by a campfire. Sound like a glorious week? Indeed, both for me and for our business, because those hours of uninterrupted thinking are focused on answering the following questions.

Day 1: What is my highest and best use to the business? Which of my natural talents can be leveraged in the pursuit of our company’s mission? For me, I generally conclude that I add the most value in the areas of business development and strategy execution, but I also think deeply about where I have grown in the prior year and how any additions to my skill inventory can benefit our company.

Day 2: Am I spending my time on my highest and best use? I review my calendar and my emails for signs that I am not. This year I identified one daily meeting and one weekly meeting that weren’t aligned with my best use.  Following my sabbatical, I delegated both of them and opened four hours a week to focus on more value-added work.

Day 3: What are our company’s five most important initiatives for the next 12 months? I review last year’s list and make adjustments based on current business conditions. During this sabbatical I found myself obsessing on cultivating our next echelon of leadership and leveraging a specific new market opportunity.

Day 4: How does my team need to grow or change in order to act on the five initiatives identified on Day 3? This is important, especially if I am to stay focused individually on my highest and best uses identified in Day 1.  I consider the senior members of our team and how we leverage their skills and talents. What resources, training and mentoring do they require, and are there any holes that need to be filled by adding or promoting team members?

Day 5: What do I need to do in the next month to execute the goals I set during my strategic sabbatical? This can include adding business metrics, setting individual team member goals and assigning projects to them, recruiting or promoting new team members and specific actions that I or members of our team need to take. Come the following Monday I’m not only rested and refreshed, but I can implement my plan.

A sabbatical doesn’t have to be measured in months. It doesn’t have to be spent at a monastery or in a library. A week of separating ourselves from the daily barrage of business issues and focusing on the bigger picture can make a world of difference in strategy and business performance. Is your next sabbatical on the calendar?