Gone Fishing — Fourth of July Holiday
A few weeks ago, I wrote about burnout among leaders and their teams these past two years, now going on three. It’s real. Many leaders closed their offices the week between Christmas and New Year’s and offered their staff a paid shutdown. We did that at Outsell — what we call a “gift of experience” — as a thank you for a good year and to give everyone a break at the same time. No emails anywhere inside the firm — woohoo!
With the success of that break and the goodwill it wrought in mind, I proposed a mid-year break leveraging the US Fourth of July holiday. It’s right after June 30, smack dab in the middle of the year, and a perfect time to extend a bit of a break to fill the tanks and ready the team for the second-half push. I suggested this break publicly earlier in the year and said we’d be doing it too. Last week, I made it official, telling our company that we will be closed July 1–5 to give everyone a five-day break (paid, of course). It’s leadership’s way of saying “thank you” to our team and giving them a smidge of extra time to enjoy family, summertime, lemonade, and some steaks on the BBQ.
So we are taking a break on those days, and you will see extended absence greetings from everyone on the Outsell team. We are a service-oriented business, but I also tell our team that we don’t operate in an emergency room, and nothing we do is life or death — if something is urgent, we’ll tend to it when we return. I’d like to believe that after 25+ years of serving our industry and being of the industry we serve, our clients will trust us to respond to their needs when we return to the office on July 6.
Meanwhile, I encourage our industry’s leadership to do the same. Build goodwill, give yourself a break, and give your team a break. It’s a small investment that pays off in spades, and it’s really important that we walk our talk and provide solutions to a very real phenomenon. Enjoy the break!