1. Send a memo to Bob, asking him if it’s okay for you to take two whole weeks together, and informing him of the date and perhaps asking whether it fits with his vacation plans. This will not only serve the function of informing him of your potential non-presence and coordinating it with his own, but also remind him that he, too, will be taking some time off and that others might be entitled to some also. 

2. Inform your colleagues and, if you are a manager of some sort, your reportees that you will be away, telling them when, and making sure that your functions are covered during your absence. If any important subordinates were planning to take the same time, and it would destroy your peace of mind while you are away if they did so, simply tell them that they’re out of luck. Establishing a bona fide vacation is a war. There are going to be casualties, one of which should not be your vacation. 

3. Make sure you have your passport up to date, if you are traveling abroad. Once you ascertain that all is in order, make sure to drop the fact that you have done so to Bob, employing a breezy and informative style that let’s him know that your vacation is proceeding according to plan and that you’re happy about it and hope he shares that happiness, seeing how he’s so tuned in to other people’s feelings and all. 

4. Make sure that your electronics work at the location to which you are going. Cell phones are not as important as BlackBerrys. This is not because you will be doing e-mails all the time or that you wish to be reachable 24-7, but because by doing half an hour of messaging first thing in the morning and at the end of the day, you will be avoiding the nightmare of returning to 8,756 e-mails in your inbox, some of which were marked URGENT! even though you put up an away message. After you have done this, by the way, you may observe to Bob in an offhand way how incredible it is that BlackBerrys work in the mountains of Wyoming. 

5. Get any shots that you require if you are going to places like Belize, which has bugs as big as footballs, and jungles that sport diseases that haven’t been invented in humans yet. Don’t forget to complain that those inoculations hurt within earshot of Bob. 

6. One week before your vacation, take a look at your schedule. People will have stuffed it with things to do for the two weeks you are planning to be away. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. “What’s this meeting with Beanie and Cecil doing on my calendar?” you may ask the person who put it there. “I’m going to be away, as I told you sixteen times already.” To which they will reply, “You’re going away? Really?” In all cases, set about clearing your time and delegating the important stuff to other people. 

7. If you are a manager, a few days before your departure call in each of your key people and once again inquire what they are planning to do during your absence. At least one will mention that he or she was planning to be away, in spite of the fact that you have ensured that nobody was going to be doing so. There is no logical reason why this happens, but it does. Be kind to this person, because they are likely to be a future boss and you have to be careful how you treat people when they’re on the way up, because they may be the ones who are treating you on the way down. But do make sure that your ducks are in order for your time away, which means that they are all present and accounted for. Don’t forget to complain to Bob about how hard it is to do this. 

8.  Wednesday before your last Friday, Bob will inform you of an important meeting/project that will have to be done “next week.” This is a critical moment. Fools and wimps will in a trembling voice remind Bob of their vacation plans, but promise to be “reachable” when necessary. Do not do this. Executive amnesia is a form of authoritarian terrorism that must be fought. “Bob,” you may say as calmly and inoffensively as possible, “As I told you several times, I’m out next week and the week after.” Bob will look confused and hurt. He may even lightly question your loyalty or dedication. That’s all right. A display of spine is seldom out of place in what we do. Of course, if the corporation is being sold, or you are about to be named to a big new position, all bets may be off. Organizations can spoil the best of plans and often do. But 99.99% of the time, the ability to disregard other people’s needs is pure executive brain flatulence. Manage it. 

9. On Friday morning, as you begin the process of packing up to leave, a host, a myriad, a phalanx of problems, challenges and effluvia will fly up and hit you in the face. In some cases, this will be just bad luck and you will have to work your head off to get rid of them. Sometimes it will be other people’s anxieties surfacing in the knowledge that you are actually not going to be there, a notion that is making them freak out. You may soothe them by telling them quietly that you will be on BlackBerry now and then, but that if they bother you with little stuff you will rip off their noses when you return. Make sure your desk is clear. Leave an away message on your e-mail. Say goodbye to your colleagues and thank them for covering your butt while you’re away. Then wait for the inevitable phone call. 

10. At 5:45 in the evening of the day you are leaving the office for the last time in the next couple of weeks, Bob will call. It will be about nothing. You will laugh and scratch for a while. He will mention that he’s looking forward to the weekend. You will say NOTHING about your vacation, but allow how you can’t wait to get out of the office either. Then, as you are wrapping up this pleasant conversation, Bob will say, “So, I’ll see you Monday, then.” Breathe. Let the silence grow between you on the phone line. “Bob,” you may then say, but that is all. Nine times out of ten, that will be enough. “Oh, right,” Bob will reply after some time, very sad, very hurt, a tiny puppy being abandoned by its owner, “You’re flaking out for a couple of weeks.” To which you may say, “Right.” He will then wish you bon voyage, and probably tell you all about his vacation plans. The one time out of ten that he gives you a hard time? What can I say. Do what you have to do. The guy’s a madman. But even madmen need limits, maybe more than other people, even. 

Now… breaking your desire to stay in touch while you’re away? That’s another story.

There have been several kerfluffles around my office recently, all revolving around the same issue: What do you tell your boss and when? This would seem to be a simple question, but it’s not. First, it depends on the boss. Some guys (and in that category I, as always, include women guys) want to know nothing until it rears up and bites them in the butt, and then you should have told them. Others want to know what color tie or scarf you’re planning to wear next Thursday. And the target moves. On Monday, Chet may want to know everything. On Tuesday, you can’t rouse him from his slumber.

So what’s a poor employee to do? Take this quiz and see how sensitive you are. How you score may determine whether or not you have a future. 

1. You have a big party coming up and you’re trying to decide what canapes to serve. Do you tell the boss? 

a. No, that’s ridiculous. 

b. Of course! She likes to know every little detail! 

c. Not really, except I make sure to have those little empanadas she likes so much. 

2. You’re going on vacation next month. Do you tell the boss?

a. No. My life is my own! 

b. Of course. He likes to know every detail. 

c. I’m going to check the dates to make sure it coincides with his vacation as much as possible, but in the end I’m going to do what I have to do, making sure that he and his assistant know what my plans are. 

3. You’re going to have a meeting with a bunch of people about something that may or may not happen sometime in the future. Do you tell the boss? 

a. No! I’ll tell him about it when he needs to know. 

b. Of course. I don’t floss without telling him everything. 

c. Yeah, I’ll shoot him an e-mail, just an FYI. Some people are attending who may mention it to him and then he’ll feel like he’s out of the loop. He hates that. 

4. Your division is about to make a big deal with another company. It’s going to be announced next Tuesday. Do you tell the boss? 

a. I’ll tell her Tuesday morning. You know, give her a “heads-up.” 

b. I’ll tell her about the whole thing right now, before we even talk to Law and Public Relations. She’s going to want to go over this thing from top to bottom! 

c. I’ll get all the moving pieces started, and then dial her in, probably on Friday. That will give her the weekend to go over the paper and think about what we might have missed.

5. You’re getting a divorce. Your life is a shambles. Do you tell the boss?

a. Definitely! He’ll feel really sorry for me!

b. I’ll mope around until he asks me what’s wrong. Then I’ll tell him everything. For a LONG time. 

c. I’ll mention it. Since it’s not about him, he’ll have limited interest in it, but he ought to know in case I flake out a little bit in the coming months.

SCORING: Score yourself 1 point for every a. answer, which is a low score because you’re a really stinky communicator and a bad employee. Score yourself 2 points for every b. answer, because while you’re a suckup, you’re erring on the right side by reaching out and trying to make your boss aware of things. You’re likely to be a pretty big pain in the a**, though. Keep that in mind. Score yourself 3 points for every c. answer, because you’re clearly trying to address the issue with subtlety and modulation. You may not get it right every time, but you’re trying to play it a situation at a time and neither tell too much or too little. So good for you. 

As always, the higher you score, the higher your score. Give yourself a point for trying. Trying counts.

As a bureaucrat, I am constantly looking for other people to do my work. I say this only half facetiously. Once you get into an office with a name on the door, when you have a door, a huge part of the job is to scope out, interview, hire and train a cadre of good people who will allow you as a manager to make the only two things that count: decisions and money.

So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to meeting this guy I’ll call Gutman. He had been touted to me as the answer to a problem that I have to solve in the next couple of months. About three weeks ago, the phone rang.

“Good news,” said Niela, the woman in HR who sets up such things. “Gutman is coming in on the 22nd. He’s working his schedule around to make sure he can get here. Lives in Atlanta, you know. But excited about coming up here to talk with you.”

Good, I thought. Guy’s got a nice resume. Seems very qualified. A grown up, too, which is not all-too common these days. You’d be amazed how many guys pop out of business school covered with afterbirth and expect a seven figure deal and a corner office. This fellow has some chops, I thought. Could be the answer. A week later, the phone rang.

“A little wrinkle,” said Niela. “Gutman wants us to pay for his airfare up here. And to put him up for a night, since he won’t be able to make the round trip in one day.”

“That’s reasonable,” I said. But a little tickle announced itself in the back of my stomach. I hate that tickle. It means a part of my perception mechanism that I can’t quite control has slipped into gear. I began to very slightly dread meeting this Gutman. But I said to myself, wait a minute, isn’t that assertiveness that exact kind of thing you’re looking for in a manager? That ability to articulate his needs and get the job done to his benefit? Isn’t that precisely the quality, as obnoxious as it may sometimes be, that differentiates a leader from those who are led?

A week ago or thereabouts, the phone rang again.

“What is it, Niela,” I said.

“Gutman says that since his interview is on a Friday, and he has other appointments in New York, it will be difficult for him to get back to Atlanta before Sunday night. So he’d like us to handle his hotel for the weekend, plus the airfare, you know…” She paused.

“And?” I said. This was beginning to be interesting.

“And he wants us to pay for his wife to accompany him on the trip.”

This was fairly astounding. Was it possible that I had stumbled on a potential CEO? Who wants such people around, even in prototype?

“Cancel Gutman,” I said to Niela. And that’s what we did. This Friday, my calendar looks blessedly clear, except for a couple of benign meetings with my gang.

I still have my little problem that needs to solved, of course. I just haven’t acquired any new ones.

1. Manage by walking around. This is a concept, minted in the 1980s, in which people walk around and call it managing. The good thing about it is that 1) it’s perceived as managing by many people who are old enough to have been around in the 1980s and 2) it gets you out of your office.

2. Hose out your inbox. I read an article of some 3000 words in a Mac publication recently that was wholly devoted to this issue. It seems there’s a concept in which, with proper use of archiving and deletion of useless crud, the content of your inbox actually hits zero. Think of that. An empty inbox. It’s like a digital high colonic.

3. Take an accountant to lunch. Not that you wouldn’t do so at any other time of the year, but there are some days over the summer where quite a few people are, for some reason, “working at home.” Those are the perfect times to allocate time and any available affection to those who receive so very little. In this group, I would include non-management lawyers and the kind of financial people who slave over the numbers but get very little day-to-day recognition. A few years from now, those are the guys who could be approving your expense report. Make sure they pay, by the way.

4. Have a think-tank. Make sure to pick a day when the Board Room is empty, then get permission to use that or some other august space to gather a group of congenial people and talk about nothing in particular. Make sure it’s catered, but not opulently. Sandwiches are fine. Essential also to invite either a Research person to do a short presentation, or invite a Business Development or New Media dude to kick around a few tether balls and run them up the proverbial flagpole. There! You’re strategizing!

5. Clean out your credenza. If you don’t have a credenza, clean out your desk. If you don’t have a desk with drawers, straighten up your pile. If you don’t have a pile… what the hell are you doing, anyhow?

6. Establish your LinkedIn network of friends, made up only of people that you would under no circumstances see in real life.

7. Start an e-mail chain, trying to set up a meeting of great importance with senior management. It will very quickly become apparent that senior management is all over the place, literally. Bob is in Denver. Ned is in Skokie. Maggie is in Petaluma. Everybody can try for weeks to get it together and nothing will transpire except for the common perception that you’re the only one pursuing an aggressive agenda. This is very good for you at no personal cost.

8. Program your ring tones. Right now I just added “Big Pimpin’” as the signature ring for our head of Sales. She’d really like it. In a few minutes I’m going to download a couple of games. I hear the new Incredible Hulk mobile game is terrific. This would be a departure from most that are associated with films, which are totally bogus.

9. I don’t know… This is the longest time I’ve devoted brainspace to an issue all week. It’s very hot outside, did you know? So I was going to say go have a picnic, but the idea of being out in the heat with some lousy tunafish and chips in the park, which is filled with tourists and mosquitos? Maybe not. Beyond that, it’s hard to say. Nobody really wants to do any work right now, do they? Do you?

10. Go online and book your vacation. Go ahead. I’m serious. Do it. I hear the dollar is still strong in Sri Lanka, although the air fare is through the roof. Take your time. Look at what’s out there. Isn’t that nice? Wherever you virtually go, there you virtually are, you know.

I had an interesting experience the other day. There’s a job open in my department. We have interviewed and interviewed and interviewed and interviewed and… hm? Oh. Sorry. Got caught in a mobius strip there.

At any rate, we were still looking for just the right person when I got a knock on my door. It was Fred, a fellow who has worked for us for a long time, as long as I’ve been here, in fact. Fred’s a good guy and a reliable, creative player at his job function. Never saw him as a manager, though. There are many, many great people like that, who slice through their job functions like hot scimitars through camel flesh, but you just can’t imagine them leading a pack of wolverines into the hunt.

Anyhow, Fred was standing in my doorway and he said, “You found anybody for that manager slot yet?” And I think, oh no, this is going to be a bad deal. I like Fred. I don’t want to hurt Fred’s feelings. But Fred as a manager? Come on.

“May I come in?” said Fred. So of course what am I going to do. “Sure, Fred,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this job you’re trying to fill and I think I could be pretty good at it,” said Fred. He had a file on his lap and he opened it and referred to some notes. “I think there’s an organizational issue at the center of the problem this job would address,” he continued. I noticed he wasn’t one bit nervous. Usually Fred seems a little nervous to me and this was sort of interesting.

There was, all in all, something new about him all of a sudden.  He was going on in a very rational fashion about the need for central control over a function that so far had enjoyed, at best, what Tom Peters would call “simulaneous loose-tight properties” in that ridiculous way Peters has of saying dumb things that stick in your mind for decades.

But Fred was continuing. “I’ve been here for a long time,” he said. “And I’m finding that thinking about even the possibility of getting this job has energized me in a whole new way. I’m getting all kinds of ideas on how I could do new things to do my own job better, and also how all of us could work together more aggressively to make the most of a really great team we’ve got here.”

Why not? I thought. We had no real answer yet. And if not Fred, who? Hadn’t he in a sense earned the right to try this new thing, even to screw it up if it came to that? Why don’t we ever see the good things that display ourselves too closely to our eyes? Why is a prophet never honored in his own country?

“Okay, Fred,” I said. He stopped and looked at me with very big eyes, eyes gleaming with ambition and hope. “We have a couple more people to see, but I assure you that I’m going to think very seriously about what you’ve said.”

“I have a lot more to tell you about if you want to hear it,” he offered.

“No, Fred,” I said. “I like what you’ve shown me today. Let me just think about things a little.”

Fred rose to his feet with a somewhat timid smile, and a flash of the old fellow I knew popped out. I like him too. Then he left.  

And now I’m thinking. If Fred hadn’t been able to envision himself in the new role, I wouldn’t have seen him that way either. But since he does? I do too. I don’t really know what I’m going to do yet, not at least with the left side of my brain that thinks it’s in control. The right side? I think it’s already made up its very subjective little mind.

Me, I pile.

Here’s the strategy of the pile:

% you get a lot of things every day in the interoffice mail, or even real mail.

% much of this you know what to do with.

% some of it you don’t know what to do with.

% that’s what you pile.

% the pile grows old and after a while you fear to look at what is within it.

% after a while, you throw away the pile.

% the moment you throw the pile away, you need something that was within it.

% Still, you’re better off without the pile.

The moment the pile is gone, you begin a new pile.

********

Here is the strategy of those who file.

* Here is an item. I need to file it.

* But… where?

* I’ll call Beverly. She will know where to file it.

* Beverly files it.

* Beverly goes to teach school somewhere.

* Nobody understands my filing system.

Go ahead! Which do you prefer??