8.24.2010

You want vacation? Take as much as you WANT!

I continually enjoy to watch the progression of how different organizational culture is from 50, 30 and even 10 years ago. Daniel Pink references yet another organization (netflix)in his article, Netflix lets it's staff take as much holiday as they want, whenever they want - and it works!

This may seem crazy to some of you as an avenue to invite even more chaos into coworker and peer to peer disputes or grudges. In fact, your mind probably immediately goes to person A or B who you know would take advantage of such a ridiculous policy or maybe you start to think about the fact that you have been here 20 years and have earned every bit of the vacation that you have, Why should the freshman staffer get the same benefits I get? Is that you? Where does your mind go?

The truth of the matter is this; The culture of successful organizations are ever changing and evolving to this more than you think. Successful organizations have been consistently reinventing the wheel from leadership structures, organization charts, who makes the final calls, how you meet, where you meet and when you meet.

Far out policies like taking vacation whenever you want make sense when your staff is answering calls, emails, and texts in the evenings and on weekends. In the world we live in, it is becoming unavoidable - especially in ministry.

This only works when you have the right culture in your organization. And whether you want to admit it or not, it comes from the top and those who influence them. In reality, an organization has to have to have a pretty amazing culture in order to accomplish this type of policy without anyone second guessing someone or taking advantage. Trust, respect, innovation, candor, bias for action, collaboration and selflessness are just the beginning of this type of culture.
  • Does your organization have the type of culture that a policy like this would work?
  • If so, what are the characteristics of a culture like this?
  • If not, are you a help or hurt to the culture that needs to be instituted? 

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