The vacation test for leaders

A simple way to check whether you built a team or a dependency on yourself.

Take 2-3 weeks off. Full offline: no Slack, no email, no “I’ll just reply at night.” If things still move at the same pace when you return, you did the job.

Four habits cover most of it. Grow leaders next to you. Write a playbook for common situations. Delegate the outcome and leave the how to them. Name contact people for your absence and say it out loud, including to people outside the team.

If everything stalls without you, the vacation isn’t the issue. How you built the work before it is.