97. Can Your Business Survive Two Weeks Without You?

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Episode Summary

Ask yourself when you last took two full weeks away from your business. Two weeks with no email at breakfast and no call that could not wait, while your company kept moving well the entire time you were gone.

In this episode I walk through the two-week absence test and what it reveals about the company you have created. Every founder I coach started their business for two reasons, because they love the challenge and because freedom sits at the top of their values, and the habits that make them excellent operators are the same habits that keep that freedom out of reach. I get into what has to be in place before a company can pass this test, which comes down to whether your people can make good decisions while you are gone and whether those decisions carry the business where you want it to go. I share the story of a client of mine who stepped up and moved her company forward during her founder's absence, only to have the direction reversed the week her boss came back.

I also talk about the story so many of us tell ourselves about next month being easier, and why I have come to see it as procrastination disguised as optimism. Jim Collins learned something related from Admiral James Stockdale, and I share that here too. I close with the two jobs I believe belong to every founder, along with what Richard Branson and J.J. Abrams understand about surrounding yourself with extraordinary people and then letting them behave that way. If you have been postponing the hard conversations while you wait for an easier season, this episode gives you a place to start.

Key Takeaways

The two-week absence test asks whether you can disconnect from your business for two full weeks and come back to a company that moved forward well without you. Coming home to eighty-hour weeks of catch-up means you moved two weeks of decisions to a later date and called it a vacation

Passing the test comes down to decision quality. Your people need enough context to make good calls while you are gone, and those calls need to carry the business toward the vision you hold for it

Founders know they created the conditions they are living in, and the story we reach for is that the season is temporary and it'll all get easier soon. As you may well know, that story postpones the conversation with the wrong hire or the client straining the team, and for many of us it has been running for years

In Good to Great, Jim Collins asked Admiral James Stockdale who among the prisoners of war did not survive, and Stockdale pointed to the optimists who kept setting rescue dates that came and went. The Stockdale Paradox asks you to hold faith in the outcome while confronting the facts in front of you today

The first job of a founder is to create the vision and communicate it enough times that the team can embody it. A good vision answers where the company is going and how decisions get made when priorities compete