wonder what is out there for you?
“Are you trying to get rid of me? Why should I interview outside … now… and every year?”
If you read these often, you know that I have changed roles a few times. What you may not realize is that I look for a new role – every year – for the last 30 years. Since the time that I saw IBM was caving in, and my resume was from college… never touched or updated. And now, it was a best practice to get my direct reports, and frankly anyone I can talk with, to do that exactly.
…and you have never let yourself wonder about it…
You have not missed a Monday meeting in 4 years. Not once. Which means you have no evidence at all about what your team can do without you… and neither do they. What exactly are you protecting, and who is it protecting them from?
Presence feels like leadership right up until the day it turns out to be the thing holding everyone at the level they are on. Including you…
in 2016 the lead guitarist walked, and said why
Kyle Cook had played lead in Matchbox Twenty since 1995. In 2016 he left, and unusually for a band, he named the reason: a communication breakdown between the members. A year later he came back. Nothing in the catalog changed, no statement squared the circle, and the group carried on with the same 4 names on it. What mattered is that the door turned out to be a door and not a wall.
…the year away is what let everybody wonder properly…
Doucette has said the outside projects were part of what held the whole thing together, that everyone going off and doing their own thing was one of the things that helped. People who have somewhere else to grow can afford to come back by choice rather than by default, and a group made only of people with nowhere else to go is not loyal, it is stuck.
You cannot find out what runs without you while you are still in the room.
Unwell came years before any of that, in 2003. Thomas has described it as a metaphor for shared human struggle, the ordinary private mess that everybody carries into the room and nobody mentions. It is also one of the most recognizable things they ever recorded, which tells you what people actually want to hear about.
Succession is tested by absence, never by a document
The only honest test of a Succession plan is a week when you are not reachable. Not a vacation where you check the thread from a beach. Gone. Most leaders have never run the test, and the reason is rarely the business. It is what the answer might say about how needed they are. What happens in that week is your plan, and everything that happens may be well… Unwell.
“Well… what if I find something better out there?” My answer surprised him… and me. “That would be a good indicator that either you have been coasting or I am not doing enough to get your best. I don’t want you to just default to being here – I want your best… and that process helps YOU realize what YOU want.”
What would you wonder about, if you were not in the room?
Start smaller than a week. Take yourself out of 1 meeting you would normally run and do not send a note afterwards asking how well it went. Do not read the minutes. Let somebody else own the outcome for 60 minutes and find out what they do with it.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: take yourself out of 1 meeting this week that you would normally run, and send no note about it afterwards.
Designing the first absence so it proves something rather than breaking something is a good use of half an hour. Schedule time with me here.
Leave the room on purpose, before the day you have no say in it and everything feels… Unwell
