In a personally challenging conversation yesterday, the question came up of “What if I planned to leave?”  Another way to ask it would be “What If I set  a definite date that would be my last day, not only in this position, but in this company? ”  I guarantee you it would change my behavior.  It would cause a dramatic shift in the things I cared about and the tasks I approached as urgent.

Suppose my plan was to hold this position through the end of the year, just 3 more months.  What would I do to make sure the company stayed on a successful trajectory?  My first objective would be to write the vision in detail for every aspect of the business.  I would share everything I know, think and believe about each functional group.  This would include what we are working on now, how that will lead to the next round of innovations and a realm of possibilities in the future.  Ultimately, it would then be on their shoulders to choose the elements of that vision they liked as well as bringing them to reality, because I would no longer be present to influence those decisions.  The second objective would be to voraciously teach a select few everything I knew about their area of the business.  It is somewhat similar to the first, but this one is about knowledge and skills.  Having just 3 months, I would be forced to choose wisely those that could learn quickly and pass the knowledge on to others.  I would simply not have the time to teach a large number of people.

This is a conundrum of sorts, because as I started this thought experiment, I assumed I would have a long list of things I wanted to accomplish and have completed.  That is simply not the case.  There are very few things that I am currently working on that jump up to that level.  Basically, if I could leave a strong team, with knowledge, skills and a thorough understanding of the vision, I could leave feeling satisfied and optimistic.  Projects I left undone would seemingly have little impact on my feelings.

What if my timeline was further out, like 12 months from now?  How would my objectives change?  They wouldn’t.  At least not very much.  I would add an element of recruiting to strengthen the team by filling in some gaps that exist and try to raise up a direct replacement for myself.  In just 3 months, there would not be sufficient time for the recruiting, screening and training, but in a year there would be.

If I was truly trying to work myself out of a job, this would be my plan and objectives would fall in line.