Taking into consideration that INC. needs to sell buckets of magazines, perhaps he did have  a better message than the one of “escape, partying and sitting on a beach” presented in the lead story chronicling his year-long round-the-world time out.  (Inc., November 2011, Inside the Mind of a Runaway CEO.)   

But, you know, I doubt it.  He looks way too detached on that November cover of Inc. magazine and cocky  in the five accompanying photos – two bare-chested-  flaunting  his current message of self-rapture.  “Being free and unencumbered is probably the biggest thing that motivates me,” states this founder of Infosurv, an Atlanta-based market research company.

 (Whoops!  Make that three bare-chested photos . Just discovered this one on the motorcycle on his way to a kite-surfing lesson along a stretch of the Brazilian coast.)

Third bare chested photo of Jared Heyman, founder of Infosurv, in Inc. story.

As yourSAbbatical gains traction in on-boarding top-level executives to the idea that the benefits of time away from a work life posts positive results on bottom line revenues, creativity, innovation, team development and succession planning, aren’t we just giddy about a story of a CEO who is surprised when the person he left in charged was spending money much more freely than he ever did and counters with the reaction of “he really didn’t care.” 

No.  We’re not happy about this sabbatical story.

Yes, the team left behind flourishes in their happiness of not having Heyman around and morale zooms to high levels.  (Is this a take-away for a leader?)  The company prospers and Carl Fusco, Infosurv’s 56-year-old now in-command person, rises to the occasion of prime decision maker. 

Still, he’s confused about the intentions of his boss.  “I’ll see a tweet come up on my LinkedIn page on how he is chewing on coca plants on tromping through the Andes. I really don’t know what his intentions are,” states Fusco.

As far as positioning sabbaticals as a serious developmental experience for an leader and a team, with positive results for a company, this story feels to me like two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back.  Heyman’s story belongs in a travel magazine.

Am I over reacting and adopting a bit of a drill sergeant attitude about this?  Is Heyman learning something about being a better person and leader and I missed it?  You read the article and let me know what redeeming value Heyman‘s story creates for companies and individuals wanting to be convinced the experience of time out is a worthy one.

The odd reunion of Heyman and his company after his absence of 11 months was reported as informal and odd.  Fusco was disappointed with how Heyman showed his appreciation for the work he had done and Fusco said this about his raise.  “It’s not what I had hoped for.”

Want more disappointing outcomes?  Check in with Lauren Goldstein, the girl friend of two and a half years, who got dumped three months into what she thought was a “couple adventure.”  “I felt misled,” she said.

Well, Laura, so does his company.

Apt responses in this group are:   “Are you out of your mind?” “No way. We want them here and working, working working.” “Who’s doing that?”

 So you might be surprised at the number of senior executives who tell us, “we’re gonna do this!”   Why be thinking about giving employees a career break?  Smart companies are future minded, have done the math and recognize that somewhere down the line, employees will have choices about where to put their talents and energy.  But that’s only one reason.

Here are  18 more reasons organizations shouldn’t let go of the idea that over 100 companies on our list of Workplaces for Sabbaticals  already know. 

1.     Strengthened employer brand
2. • Revitalized workforce
3. • Increased engagement
4. • Attract top talent
5. • Retain valued workers
6. • Opportunities to reinforce company values
7. • Develop talent through work coverage process
8. • Improved retention/longevity
9. • Build internal strength through work coverage
10. • Promote succession planning
11. • Build organizational agility through cross training
12. • Increase professional growth of workforce
13. • Foster teamwork
14. • Boost morale
15. • Increased innovation
16. • Good PR for company
17. • Reputation for being progressive/forward thinking
18. • Customers are impressed

Do you know of another reason companies are keeping sabbatical programs on their list of “to do’s?”  Let us know.

Ideas can spur conversations and  so can research and statistics.  If you need those to better open your top level management to  a conversation on why other companies are choosing the sabbatical program as an option that means a variety of needs for future success, stay tuned.   We’ll provide all that we know in our next post.

IKEA is hosting the second year of its Life Improvement Sabbatical Contest. Last year’s Life Improvement Sabbatical Contest attracted 2,000 entrants; more than 46,000 people cast votes for the finalists. The grand prize winner was Kyria Henry of Round Hill, Virginia, who proposed her idea for paws4vets, which trains and pairs service dogs with veterans needing assistance.

“Winning the IKEA Life Improvement Sabbatical Contest has allowed us to expand our programming, breed and train more dogs, and most importantly, place more service dogs with veterans, active duty military members and their dependents,” says Henry. “Words cannot express the amazing platform and opportunities this contest has given me and my project this past year.”

The grand-prize winner will receive $100,000 cash.  If the winner wants to take a sabbatical from work to get the project going, he or she can take up to half the prize to fund a year-long break.  The winner will also receive a trip to a spa in Arizona where he or she will receive a life coaching session with Dr. Martha Beck, plus follow-up session with Dr. Beck by telephone.  The total grand prize value is $128,000.

In addition, four runners-up will each receive a $1,000 IKEA gift card.

Get your idea in between 9/13/11 through 10/17/11 by submitting it through the Life Improvement Project website. A panel of judges will choose the five finalists, and then the public will get to vote. A winner will be announced by mid-January 2012.

Worn out from job hunting but have a worthy project idea?  Need time-off from work to get your idea off the ground? 

Job or no job, winning the year-sabbatical- gold.  A new living room?  Not shabby.  Go for it!

 No need to despair. You can do it yourself!  Really?  And  how might that work?

 For inspiration, tips, tools and real stories of people who have added sabbaticals to their career strategy, mark your calendars now for the 2^nd annual nationwide Meet, Plan, Go! Event on October 18^th.   It’s a blast! 

 Sherri Ott and Michaela Potter,  founders of Briefcase to Backpack, are enthusiastic about designing a content-loaded experience.  Sherry and Michaela are colleagues who work hard to make this event a reality and a huge success. They, like us, believe that career breaks yield productive, positive career results for individuals and their companies.

At this event, you will:

1. MEET like-minded, supportive people in person and online.
2. Get tools and tips to PLAN your career break travels.
3. Find inspiration to GO by hearing other career breaker’s stories.

Here are the 18 cities for the October 18th event:

Austin | Boston | Chicago | Denver | Honolulu | Las Vegas | Los Angeles
Minneapolis | New Orleans | New York City | Orlando | Portland
San Francisco | Seattle | St. Louis | Toronto | Washington DC

Check it out and mark your calendars.  Go to this remarkable event!  You will be sorry if you miss it!

Michaela Potter, Co-Founder, Briefcase to Backpack

Sherry Ott, Co-Founder, Briefcase to Backpack

Despite the battle cry to wear bike shorts, Bruce Weber does his cycle dream re-do his way.

“Both of my parents died. My brother and his wife had a son. A couple of sincere and serious love affairs began and ended.  I moved to Chicago and back to New York.  I spent four years as a theater critic.  I published a couple of books. I traveled on a bicycle in Vietnam, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland and France.  I renovated my apartment. Twice.”

Likely his 25^th anniversary at The New York Times and the fact that he’s been writing obituaries for the last three years prompted a little of this life assessment. 

After taking stock of life’s experiences, Weber posed two questions:

• How am I doing?
• What am I missing?

Many of us leap toward the future with 3-year plans or continue filling up a bucket list  of more things to add to our lives.   Weber’s approach  – assess current reality (How am I doing?) then look for what’s absent or misplaced (What am I missing?) - might be a better way for any one who is looking to fill up precious sabbatical time with a meaningful life experience.

Weber heads toward hot rolling wheat fields of Washington.

What Bruce Weber decided he was missing was a dream re-do.  Eighteen years ago Weber rode a bicycle across the United States, solo.  In mid-July he turned his first pedal outside of Portland Oregon to re-live the same experience and I’ve been following him ever since.

Don’t think of Mr. Weber as a triathlon type.  With a short list of ailments, he jokes that at 58, “I’m both perfectly healthy and falling apart.”

Weber’s health self- assessment:

• I probably drink a little too much but don’t eat many sweets. 
• I quit smoking 10 years ago.
• I have gout, acid reflux, and a degenerating tendon in my right foot, tinnitus and tendinitis in my left elbow.
•  Three years ago, I had surgery to reattach the retina in my right eye.
• And this spring I received a diagnosis of spinal stenosis – a narrowing of the spinal canal – which pinched a nerve in my neck and sent throbbing pains in my left should.  Treated with steroid injections, it feels better.

His three month career break has a plan: average 300 miles a week, or 50 miles a day, with one day off and never sleep on the ground.  (He carries a tent and sleeping bag just in case.)

What I love about Weber’s dream re-do is his expression that he’ll be “trying to do it again.” At 38 he had no concept of the length and arduousness of what lay in front of him.  Every challenge – the Rockies, for example, or the shade less sun baked plains of South Dakota was essentially a surprise.  “Perseverance is, after all, easier for the poorly informed, he stated. “ This time I know exactly how I’m going to be working.  I’m nervous.”

He’s also excited. 

Weber has taken a rash of criticism for his choice of straight handle bars for his $8,000 bike from cyclists, more helpful suggestions from those more experienced than he thought possible, and a rash of offers for meals and accommodations from readers in states he’ll be crossing.   “Be careful,” he says, “I’m not too proud to accept.”

While many sabbatical experiences are first time daunting dreams of a lifetime, creating a second try at an experience is even more dramatic.  Bruce Weber might not be able to live this dream again.  He knows this.   

In Sunday’s New York Times (Life is a Wheel, Sunday August 14, 2011), Weber has already modified his schedule with reduced daily distances and admits to hitting the wall right before the 500 mile mark.

There’s much to learn from Bruce Weber and his re-do dream.  What  extraordinary experience in your life might be worth a repeat? Age, heat, medical ailments, lonliness and physical exhaustion hasn’t deterred Mr. Weber.  He pedals on.   Be inspired.

Follow Weber’s progress on the In Transit blog and on Twitter, @nytbruceweber.

Alexis Grant, the US News & World Report career writer addressing the topic, also provided some great tips on negotiating a sabbatical if your company doesn’t have an official sabbatical program for employees. Here’s a brief summary, but you’ll want to read Grant’s entire article for details.

1. Be purposeful. As we’ve often said here at yourSABBATICAL.com, the best sabbaticals are planned ones.
2. Show how your time away will benefit the company. How does one do this? Our toolkit on “Negotiating Your Sabbatical” takes you through the process, step by step.
3. Think carefully about your timing. What time of year will be the easiest time for you to leave your colleagues for a while? When will your time away have the least impact? And how long have you been with your company before you even approach the subject of a sabbatical?
4. Be prepared to quit. Yikes, right? Well….what ARE you going to do if your boss says no to your sabbatical request? Our toolkit lays out your options and how to respond.
5. Play it up on your resume. If you think time away from the job is something you should “hide” on your resume, think again. Instead, leverage your sabbatical on your resume or professional bio.
6. If your boss says no, consider a company that does support career breaks. Drum roll, please….here are more than 100 companies that offer them regularly to employees.
7. It can’t hurt to ask. Actually, it can, if you don’t ask the right way. Your pitch needs to be thoughtful and strategic, and that takes planning and forethought.

A conversation with a discouraged entrepreneur over the holiday weekend underscores a sense of shared un-enthusiasm.  With her company’s mid-year numbers so bad, this business owner said she has no choice but to ignore them.  “I’ve told our 12 employees that it’s not mid-year – it’s a new year.  We’re wiping the slate clean and starting over.  Otherwise, we’ll be paralyzed.

No matter your level of lingering skepticism about the economy.  No matter where you need to find some giddy anticipation of hope – in a high desire for a someday sabbatical, a better job or any job, or doing more with your life than you are right now – perhaps it’s wise to turn to Julia Cameron for advice on how to uncover a sense of optimism.

Cameron’s groundbreaking body of work on the creative process in the form of a bestselling trilogy – The Artist’s Way, Walking in This World and Finding Water – offers advice and inspiration for tackling challenges whether artistic ones or not.

In Finding Water:  The Art of Perserverance,  Cameron states that optimism is partially the happy accident of psychodynamics and partially a trained response. ”While some people are born optimists, the rest of us need to work at it a little,” shares this author of twenty-four books, active artist and expert on the creative process.

To uncover optimism, Cameron suggests we allow ourselves to explore on our own behalf with the admonishment of abandoning big dreams and goals. 

“Think – and start – very small.”

With  a break from your career top of mind, use these questions to spur your exploring:

1.  What might be one small element of a future sabbatical (a physical challenge, a new job skill, travel, or an artistic endeavor)? 
2. Imagine actually doing it.  What is that like?  How is the sensation you feel?
3.  What’s one very small change you need to make to accommodate this for the future?  (Do 3-4 hours of  career research, take a month of language lessons via Skype, TiVo some travel shows, ride your bike 5 miles?)

Just reading this isn’t good enough to fully start the journey to regain or find optimism.  Cameron’s best advice is in this statement:    “Today, all you need is the grace to begin beginning.”

So, wipe the slate clean.  Pretend the future is yours for the making. (It is.)  Take the first smallest step.

You just need to find enough water to get you through this dry spell. 

If you are interested in further ways to developor recover your creative self, visit The Artist Way Online. 

Realizing at sixty that they have another twenty-five years to do the things that matter most, this best-educated, goal driven generation will approach “living their purpose” with the same gusto they fueled the civil rights movement and women’s liberation.  Pink’s book, Drive, predicts a future where companies will address this “purpose-driven” population with policies that allow people to pursue purpose on their own terms (i.e., a sabbatical experience).

I’m all for that and you probably are too.  The trouble is revolutions need cohesiveness.  A movement has been underway as far back as a century ago calling for a new narrative to be written on a new stage between midlife and old age – a kind of higher adulthood.

Currently, the energetic and passionate over-60 crowd doesn’t even know how to identify their life stage or what to call themselves.  “Old age” is out.  So is “over-the-hill.”  And sixty is not the new forty so forget that.  What to replace call this new life stage of sixty-eight year olds is anyone’s guess.

Mark Freedman, author of The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage beyond Midlife takes five chapters to educate the reader on the work of experts – past and present – on this new life stage before he lays out the sizeable list of contenders of what to call it:

• Third Age
• Third Act (Jane Fonda like this one.)
• Third Chapter
• Second Adulthood
• Adulthood II
• Act V
• Midcourse
• Middlesence
• Late Middle Age
• Life-Take2
• Sensescence (comes from medicine)
• Encore Stage (Freedman’s own suggestion.)

How can we expect companies to embrace new policies when the premise for doing so doesn’t even have a name?

The pre-cursor to the Feminist Movement that goaded women of my generation to think differently and take action was called the Women’s Liberation Movement. Maybe not the best name but we burned bras over it.  Until there is a name for those of us over sixty who want to live lives differently than the previous generations as well as a label for this new life stage, traction for a revolution will not happen.

If I squint and look in my crystal ball, I see is a bunch of educated gurus shouting out in the literature for a group of people (aged sixty to eighty) who might try finding their own voice.  Pink’s purpose-driven revolution will not be a force to be reckoned with nor shape the workplaces of the future unless those of us over sixty get a name to identify ourselves.  

And a good one at that.  Who in the world would want to join the Sensecence Movement?

All three highly educated, high achieving business owners seemed out of touch with my reality – the economy still struggles.  When I blurted out, “I think it could get worse,” six angry (or maybe, pleading) eyes met mine.  I feared stoning.

Vindicated with yesterday’s Wall Street Journal headliner, “Economic Outlook Darkens,” I feel like reconvening dinner for another take on the conversation.

But after much deliberation, my better take-away is less of right or wrong about the economy and more a question of marching toward becoming burned out. Yes, I said it and you heard me.

 B-U-R-N-E-D  O-U-T.  

My dinner companions (myself, included) are working harder than ever and their businesses don’t love them back in the same grand way they are used to. Anyone else having that experience in their career?

Burnout is the illness of just about any averagely driven person in any profession.  Associated with overwork, it was considered a noble affliction back in the seventies when people dove  into the world with convictions to change it.

Now it’s a sign of weakness, a career killer and a whiner’s lament.   

Overwork can cause burnout but it’s not the only cause.  Today’s burnout has to do with inflated expectations – the gap between expectation and reward.   The payoffs for working hard today don’t have the same successes as before.  You can smile all you want to about that new piece of business, but chances are the margins are slimmer.

While full blown burnout can lead to depression and blocked energy, mini-versions of burnout leave us going through the past motions of success with unrealistic expectations for the future. Rosy colored glasses have their place but denying the reality of the future economy’s recovery clouds your best reponse to it.

 While many shout  “new opportunities” in a struggling business environment, the real reality is working for insufficient reward (whether the currency, is money, prestige, or positive feedback) leaves us with a sensation of emptiness.  Without recognizing symptoms of burnout, we can’t convert our actions and take charge of our working lives in a better way.

And with roots in working hard as a form of religion and self-identity, burning out on it amounts to a crisis of faith.  No one is talking about it in my circles.

Some people just need surprised to see how a new pattern of working could emerge to ease their pain. My visit two weeks ago to Tucson, prompted my brother to take a Friday and Saturday morning away from his auto-recycling business with 12 employees for the first time in a year.  At 4pm on Friday afternoon after checking sales numbers, he grinned and said, “I just had the best Friday ever… and I wasn’t there.”   Big revelation for someone who thinks his business rocks around his constant presence.

Is pushing harder and harder at our jobs the answer?  Is there a deep flaw in our work culture that prevents us from thinking that anything other than working harder is the best approach?

A drained battery that can no longer hold its charge had a point of full recovery.  Many of us would do well to check our gauges for even the tiniest indications that working harder and harder needs evaluation as the best approach in today’s environment. 

Draining your battery will have high cost on high achievement in the future.  I guarantee it.

A good friend is packing up to move  six states to the east – closer to the ocean where it won’t snow.  Without a job for over a year, she figures her spirit will get a boost in new surroundings where the sun shines more days than in Cincinnati.  In no time she’ll be inspired to tackle a future career move.

Carving out a new home will also make life better all around.  “It’s an Eat-Pray-Love idea,” she says.

Display tables at Barnes & Noble get their share of novels and memoirs about re-constituting life or re-considering one’s self through an adventure of moving or renovating a house.  “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes got a lot of attention as did Meghan Daum’s “Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House.”

 When we feel ‘everything is changing,’ it’s natural as peach pie to think a new place to live is a fine way to proceed.  After all, when you can’t do anything about the economy, your aging parents, your so-so marriage or your stalled career, it can help to be in charge of something.  For some, it’s what they see out a new front door.

We have a national belief in the power of re-invention.  Our sense of purpose, value and sense of self does require personal renovation at times throughout our lives but easy, it’s not.  And no matter how many times we’ve strummed up a new tune for our lives, it’s all quite trying because it’s damn hard work. 

Which explains why a visit to that personal renovation toolbox for many of us may feel a bit empty – and daunting.   The initial  feelings – hold your ground and  fight for a new sense of self or flee- angle for our energy.  Flee wins.

While the idea of  ‘if you get where you live right you’ll get your life right’ sounds romantic, it may or may not solve the problem.  But for those intrigued grab your boots and Birkenstocks and head to Boulder, Colorado. (New Gallup research has just named Boulder as the top place for well-being.)

Precious few of us will find a new sense of self or more happiness by simply moving. Less thrilling would be to take a planned  break from one’s job or negotiate a sabbatical for 4-6 weeks for the purpose  of sorting  through current reality as well as what’s in the  personal renovation tool box.

Fleeing – always an option – could be part of your future.  Boulder does have great views.