Block Leave - Avoid Being Called From Work
Some strategies and mindset check about being contacted during a block leave
Hey, fellow Leader 🚀,
I am Artur and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach me on Substack and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
This article will cover an unpleasant situation. When a Project Manager (or any manager) goes on block leave, the challenge is not being called during their well-deserved holidays. Several aspects increase or decrease the chances of this happening, but there is also a mindset aspect.
Knowledge Sharing
The majority of the times a Project Manager is called is due to an event that happened and there are missing pieces of information somewhere. Nobody can find it and there is no other choice but to call the Project Manager and ask for details about some aspect of the project.
This is a symptom of having documents stored only on the Project Manager’s email or laptop. Important documentation and project knowledge should be found in the team’s repository. The repository could be in the form of a SharePoint or Wiki site. The most important is to have a space where up-to-date documents and knowledge are stored and a colleague can fetch it or continue to work on it.
It is a waste of a Project Manager’s deserved time off, to come back online for a few minutes just to send an email and a call about a specific topic. This means that knowledge management is not properly addressed inside the team.
Backups are in place
For any management position, and even for every role inside the team, is important to put in place redundancies. Identifying and training backups for the Project Manager role ensures a stable management transition when the Project Manager is not available. Having someone who is also up to date with the events or subjects, will ensure a second pair of eyes and also have someone to share and discuss some ideas with.
It’s understandable how difficult it is to find backups for a Project Manager role inside the team. Several reasons may apply: Lack of interest of other team members about the responsibility and job profile; not enough maturity on the topics; the skillsets for handling some stakeholders or other project situations are not there yet; etc.
Despite the challenges that might occur in defining a backup, a Project Manager can split the activity into multiple topics and assign each topic to a different set of colleagues inside the team. The most important part is to have someone who can cover that topic with autonomy and authority in case of the Project Manager’s absence.
Going on holiday email
Very important! Before going on block leave, is important to send a “holiday” email with the current status of multiple subjects under the Project Manager umbrella. This ensures that a written document is available for consultation if someone needs to understand the status of a topic.
My block leave email may start to be written two weeks before my holidays. The reason is to make sure the important topics will be on the email, even the small events of important matters, that sometimes slip our minds until come back to us with a bang. My block leave email is sent to both my direct manager and my designed backups.
If something happens they can discuss it with each other and find a solution. In case the strategy didn’t work for some reason, I know if someone calls me, it will be important and not be a trivial question like “Where is the document X about Y?”.
Mindset
This might be the most challenging one. There are several aspects: The Project Manager’s vanity; The “Making Sure I am needed and therefore not fired”; The lenient way a colleague calls another for trivial questions; etc.
Depending on the person, we might hear that someone is on holiday but is always checking emails, and replying to them because their work is too important, and their role is critical for the project’s success. It’s all very impressive, however, it shows there are no backups or no working structure. Is the Manager’s responsibility to put systems in place that can work on his or her absences. No matter how important it makes the Managers feel about themselves.
Any leadership position has insecurities as all roles inside the organization. Even a CEO can be fired. So it’s understandable that a Manager wants to ensure their work has quality and their importance in the project is high. However, is a very weak mindset to gather and hide information about project matters to ensure the person is relevant for the position. For me, it only shows that a Leader has limitations and can never take on projects with bigger dimensions without being a liability.
Another situation that might occur is the team’s mindset to contact people on holidays and do so normally like inviting them for a coffee. For some people it might appear OK, however, for others, it might be a reflex of a hostile working environment where someone cannot shut down for a while. It’s the Leader’s responsibility to ensure lenient calls don’t happen and make sure the people who are online are the ones who should take on the subjects.
Team Empowerment and Autonomy
People should feel empowered and autonomous in their work, to make sure the project subjects go smoothly even with the absence of some colleagues. People should have the ability to do their work and cover for a colleague in case something happens. This means a Leader should encourage the initiative and ask for opinions about project situations and what would be the best strategy going forward.
In case of the Manager’s absence, a delegated team member with project insight and part of the project’s decision-making, won’t feel like an alien if needed to make a decision. If the decision scope is indeed large, a more senior manager can step in to cover and evaluate the prospect of a decision. If all elements are taken care of and even so, it’s better to call the Project Manager, so be it. Yet again, when this happens all the basic aspects have already been taken care of, and the Project Manager will understand it’s a critical decision to make.
An Opportunity to test all the systems
When I go on holiday or even any other of my team members, it’s an opportunity to test all the systems. To see if the remaining team can pick up some subjects and move forward with them. Every time someone, or I, need to call a colleague, I immediately think how this could have been avoided. Was it related to a lack of team culture? If it was about a document, why does a colleague need to connect just to send an email? Has the backup the required skills for the task, and if not, why that person was assigned in the first place? Asking the “Why” the call happened ensures the systems’ improvement to avoid future interruptions.
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest in the comments or send me a message on Substack.
Cheers,
Artur