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- ✍️DraftedSaturday, May 16, 2026 at 7:29 PM
- ✓Approved by clientTuesday, June 9, 2026 at 2:57 AM
- 📡Published to platformWednesday, June 17, 2026 at 1:50 AM
The CEO who couldn't take a Tuesday off
He was the highest-paid bottleneck in the company. A CEO I worked with could not take a Tuesday off. Not "would not." Could not. By 9 AM he had forty-seven unread emails. Three direct reports would not make a decision without him. His wife had stopped asking when he would be home for dinner. The company was performing. He was the problem. When I asked what would happen if he went dark for forty-eight hours, he said he did not know. He had never tested it. That is not a calendar problem. It is a trust problem wearing a schedule. We did not fix his calendar. We fixed his definition of leadership. A leader who cannot be unavailable has not built a team. He has built a dependency. Dependency is the enemy of legacy. One test I run with every senior leader I coach: if you disappeared for one week, would the work continue or would it stop? If it would stop, the organization does not have a CEO. It has a bottleneck with a title. The Tuesday you cannot take off is telling you exactly which one you are. Be honest: if you went dark for forty-eight hours, would the work keep moving or stop?
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