Always Time for Down Time

By Omar Best-Delice

The case of ‘They will be no one to do what I do if I take a break’ or even ‘this is a crucial time for my business’. No disputing that your organization may be at that crucial stage where it needs your undivided regular attention, but this will not be so during most stages of the enterprise’s life. A mark of a good leader and a potentially successful enterprise is reflected in the people that work with and below the leader. If your organization cannot exist without you for a week or two, what hope do you have of it succeeding should you suddenly, unexpectedly fall ill?  

If your organization cannot survive without you for a short while you may not be doing as good a job as you think in a few crucial aspects of management, primarily; hiring, training, delegation, employee empowerment and succession planning.

Organizations also Need Downtime

An organization is a collection of people and processes around those people. The same way people with their limited attention spans take time out to do something different to refresh themselves, couldn’t the same thing be applied to the enterprise?

Google’s 20% time is a great example of this. Employees get to spend one work day each week doing something completely unrelated to their daily activities. They get to put the ‘what if’ factor to work, exploring projects and possibilities they normally would never get the time to follow through on. That day has been found to be a boon to creativity and therefore beneficial to the individual employees and to the company as a whole.

The Lesson of Downtime

The lesson going forward is that at the individual level, at the level of the entrepreneurial leader and at the full organizational level, at some point sessions, whether structured or spontaneous, should be scheduled as a regular part of the organization’s life. The benefits of such time spent are intangible but positively impact on internal planning, motivation, creativity and innovation.