This past summer, I took 60 days to step away from the company I founded in 2005.
After 20 years of designing, building, and growing Cap Ex Advisory Group, most people assumed they understood why. A sabbatical was a chance to rest. To recover. Perhaps even to grieve a little for the years that had passed while I was busy building the business. Those were benefits. But they were not the primary reason I left.
I left because I wanted to see what would happen when I wasn’t there.
An Uncomfortable, Yet Invaluable Experiment
For founders of for-profit ventures and, more importantly, executive directors of nonprofit organizations, that can be an uncomfortable experiment.
Mission-focused organizations often develop around people with extraordinary commitment to the work. Over time, commitment can quietly become dependence. The executive director knows the funders, understands the history, manages the crises, reassures the staff, maintains important relationships, and carries an enormous amount of institutional knowledge.
That may feel like leadership. But it silently creates organizational vulnerability.
My sabbatical gave the people around me an opportunity to lead without waiting for me. Problems still occurred. Decisions still needed to be made. Clients still expected answers. My colleagues had to exercise their own judgment, solve problems, and occasionally develop solutions that were different from the ones I might have chosen.
That was precisely the point.
Discovering Shared Leadership … And Something Else
When I returned, the organization had not simply survived my absence. It had demonstrated something important about itself: leadership existed beyond its founder. We call it shared leadership.
For nonprofit organizations, shared leadership capacity has tremendous value. Why?
Well, for starters, funders routinely evaluate organizations competing for limited resources. When two organizations address similar social needs, organizational capacity matters. An organization whose success depends overwhelmingly on one executive presents a different risk than one with distributed knowledge, capable staff, and demonstrated leadership redundancy. A sabbatical provides a meaningful way to test and strengthen that capacity.
But something else happened during my time away. I had time to think.
Cap Ex was founded around two remarkably simple verbs: help and create. We help nonprofit organizations create socially significant civic structures. Yet after two decades of doing that work, I rarely had the uninterrupted time to ask what those words should mean for our next decade. During my sabbatical, I did.
I researched those two ideas. I considered how well our company lives up to them today and whether the meaning of our work may need to evolve. The organizations we serve are confronting increasingly complicated financial, political, demographic and operational conditions. Helping them create the structures their communities need tomorrow may require something different from what worked yesterday.
That kind of reflection is difficult to squeeze between staff meetings, client calls, fundraising conversations and the crisis that appeared unexpectedly at 3:30 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon.
Nonprofit executives understand this better than most.
They run organizations that try to solve difficult social problems, often with inconsistent funding, limited staff, high burnout rates, and maddening turnover. They carry responsibility for employees, donors, boards and communities while navigating political and economic conditions they cannot control.
Imagine what might happen if we occasionally gave them permission, and the financial resources, to stop.
Not permanently. Perhaps six or eight weeks.
Let them rest. Let them spend time with their families. Let them read, think, and remember why they started doing this work.
And while they are gone, let everyone else lead.
That combination is what makes the sabbatical so compelling. It is simultaneously an investment in the individual and a stress test of the institution. The executive returns with renewed energy and perspective. Staff emerge with greater confidence and responsibility. The organization discovers where its leadership systems work and where they do not.
A Reasonable Cost for a Major Return
The cost of a sabbatical can be surprisingly modest. For many organizations, a funder might make this possible through a low-five-figure operational grant. Compared with the dollars philanthropy invests in programs, facilities, and strategic initiatives, that is a relatively small investment in protecting the human and organizational infrastructure responsible for delivering them.
My own experiment was an unquestionable success. I returned refreshed, but, more importantly, to a company whose people had demonstrated they could lead without me. I also came back with new ideas about the work we do and considerably more enthusiasm about where we might take it next.
When I was contemplating my sabbatical, a colleague told me about a pastor who had taken one. When the pastor returned, my colleague said he was “ready to kick the devil’s ass.”
The line made me laugh.
After taking a sabbatical myself, I understand exactly what he meant. But in a follow-up discussion, he shared another truth. After a period of self-leadership, it was the congregation, not the pastor, ready to firmly plant its boot on Lucifer’s backside.
The Smartest Investment We Can Make
Tampa Bay has extraordinary nonprofit leaders tackling extraordinarily difficult problems. In this moment, the smartest investment the region’s philanthropic community can make is giving those leaders the resources to step back momentarily. Give them time to rest. Give their staff the opportunity to lead.
And then marvel at the innovative mindset that emerges when they come back.
