The summer air has filled the sky and odds are you have either gone on a vacation or have one planned for the summer. The question is, can the business continue to run without you there?
Let me share an example of a client…
A client of mine runs a 22-person marketing agency. Last August she took her first real vacation in three years, ten days, phone in a drawer, out of office actually on.
By Tuesday her project manager called. A warm lead had sent back a proposal needing a small discount approved before it could move forward. Nobody but her had ever signed off on pricing. The proposal sat waiting on a signature that couldn’t happen until Sunday. The lead went quiet. She never found out if they went with someone else.
This is just a small example, but it shows the actual cost of being the only person who can say yes. It doesn’t show up as a crisis. It shows up as a deal sitting in a folder while you’re 2,000 miles away deciding whether to check your phone at the pool.
Business owner or leader of a department, if you’re the only one who can make the call, everyone else is waiting for instructions instead of moving on their own judgment.
Here Is The Real Test
Pull up last week.
List every decision that came through you, big or small.
Next to each one, ask whether someone on your team had both the information and the authority to make that call themselves.
Count how many times the answer is no.
That number is your real vacation prep.
It has nothing to do with what you pack.
What changes once decision rights are clear
Once people know what’s theirs to decide and where the line sits, decisions stop waiting on you specifically. A pricing exception gets approved by whoever owns the client relationship, inside limits you set ahead of time. A complaint gets handled by whoever’s closest to it. You find out about outcomes at your weekly check-in, not every step along the way, because oversight moves from personal approval on every decision to a rhythm of outcomes and check-ins.
Building that takes three things:
- roles that are actually defined
- limits that are actually written down
- a way to see results so trust builds on evidence instead of hope.
Not only that, but you should hand off any decisions to the right people before you take off.
Get that in place once, and it holds every time you walk out the door, not just when you go on vacation in July.
PS — If your last vacation looked more like remote work with a beach view, that gap is worth closing before the next one. Structured to Scale walks you through building real decision rights into your team, at your own pace, so the business runs whether you’re in the building or not.