Creating purposeful executive absences
- Priya Venkatesan
- Jul 19
- 2 min read
Executive burnout hit 56% in 2024 (LHH report).
The need to be constant available to business has also created decision fatigue, health and sleep issues for executives. The organisation also pays with wrong decisions & reduced productivity.
For executive & organisational sustainability, a conscious effort has to go into creating and curating successful absences, wherein the executive is not available to business/teams for a period of time.
This assumes critical importance in the age of AI, which is constantly available without fatigue.
Then the only different thing a human can offer is the quality of their presence which is directly influenced by the quality of their absence.
This post is not about vacations. It is about:
The ability to do deep work without distraction
Recovery
Productivity
Balancing Uptime & Downtime.
All of these have to be to orchestrated on an everyday basis rather than the temptation to run on 'once a year miracle vacation'.
More importantly the below tendencies/beliefs have to be let go of:
I am Hercules - Without me nothing moves, I am indispensable.
I say "yes" to everything that comes my way. I don't set boundaries.
A good leader should be always available to be effective.
I will be replaced if I let go.
The below needs to be let in:
I need to preserve my mind space for quality decision making.
My energy determines my motivation.
I trust my team.
I communicate boundaries.
My attention is my secret weapon.
Reflections for an executive to get started on strategic absence:
How do you like to structure your deep work on a day-to-day basis?
What defines uptime and downtime for you?
What can improve your productivity?
What is your peak energy zone according to your circadian rhythm?
What level of your absence can you train your team to bear?
What support structures would you build to sustain?