NatalyaV / Pla2na / Shutterstock.com 24 • SEPTEMBER 2024 • PPAI Voices | Innovation ANY GOOD WORK TEAM depends on each other to make everything run smoothly. But every member of that team needs to step away – whether you’re taking a well-deserved vacation, attending a conference or simply stepping away from work for personal reasons. It might be overstating it to say there’s an art to informing your colleagues, clients and stakeholders of your absence, but there are more effective processes than what I’ve often seen over the course of my career. One of technology’s most crucial uses is communication, but the more deliberately we use it, the better proof we’ll get that stepping away is not only necessary but nothing to fear. The Ghosting Approach Sadly, one of the most common ways to communicate absence is no communication at all. Too often I’m facing a tight deadline, and the person I need to gather critical information from is out of the office for the next week. Sometimes I find this out by looking at their calendar. The absolute worst-case scenario is when they no-show a meeting that was scheduled when they were still in the office. Another unproductive approach is when a colleague blocks out their entire team’s calendar, assuming their teammates are unable to make progress without them or afraid they won’t be able to catch up upon returning. Progress can happen without you. In fact, it must happen. A Proactive Process The good news is that the technology tailored to scheduling has been around for decades. The bad news is that there has never been much of a standardized way of utilizing Putting The ‘Proactive’ In PTO By CW Karstens
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