Month Off Doesn’t Work for CEOs

Maybe the commander in chief knows something that they don’t, but many private-sector executives can’t imagine taking even two weeks off, much less spending a month on working vacation like President Bush.

“The longest I could take off is a week,” said Chuck Davis, chief executive of Marina del Rey-based BizRate.com. “There is a limit to how many short and trite e-mails you can send to your employees, and a week just about uses all of that up.”

Granted, it is a working vacation for Bush, and, unlike most executives, he will have a sizable personal staff on his ranch near Crawford, Texas, and will be able to fly in aides as needed.

But Bush has been getting considerable heat since it was announced Aug. 4 that he would be out of the White House for the rest of the month. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll released this week showed that 55% of Americans felt that Bush was spending too much time away from Washington.

Even in this age of mobile phones, laptop computers and wireless Internet access, most executives consider personal interaction a necessary part of the job.

“I could [take a month off], but then I’d have to take off a lot longer because I wouldn’t have a job to come back to,” said Steve Jackson, chief executive of Applied Semantics Inc. in Los Angeles.

“I can be anywhere and connect to the office, but most of my job is much more individualized and face to face,” Jackson said. “You can only manage clients and employees and strategy so well when you are trying to do it remotely. I have to be able to have face-to-face meetings with my teams.”

At least one high-profile executive who took an extended leave ended up paying the price.

Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Larry Ellison, a world-class sailor, took a three-month vacation on his boat Sayonara in 1997, but on his return found his sales force in chaos and his development projects well behind schedule.

Ellison’s archrival, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, has taken vacations to study themes as varied as molecular biology and Internet strategies, but usually for no more than two weeks. And Gates did a far better job of delegating responsibilities, and his company did not suffer as a result.

For Bush, his own words might be responsible for some of the ire of other executives. In the past, Bush has evoked the image of a White House run like a corporation, with himself as the CEO and Vice President Dick Cheney as the chief operating officer.

“This is not something that any senior executive would do,” said Ed Lawler, director of USC’s Center for Effective Organizations. “It seems that the president is acting like the chairman of the board. Perhaps Cheney is the CEO.”

Some people, however, think Bush is doing the right thing, as long as his need to get away from “workaholic” Washington is a sign that he also recognizes that American workers need more time off too.

“I think for the president to take four weeks off underscores and puts the spotlight on the importance of taking time off from the grind because the grind is longer than it’s ever been,” said Joe Robinson, director of the Work to Live campaign and author of a forthcoming book by the same name. “If the president can see fit to do this, then the rest of us ought to be able to escape for longer than the typical 8.7 days off that Americans get away from work.”

But don’t expect the presidential getaway to mean more time off for regular workers, said Alec Levenson, a USC research professor and labor economist.

The time American workers can spend on vacation is limited in two ways, Levenson said.

“Some in the technical, professional and managerial levels actually have the time to take off but don’t because their work would pile up and because they feel it would be held as a mark against them,” he said.

On the other side, Levenson said, are the front-line employees who don’t have to work overtime or take their work home, but wind up using their vacation time in being a good parent, attending a meeting at their child’s school or taking them to the doctor’s office.

Ian Mitroff, professor of management and organization at USC, said that he doesn’t fault the president for deciding to take time off. But Mitroff does take issue with the timing of the vacation and the fact that Bush is still very much an unproven president just six months into his first term. Indeed, former President Reagan didn’t generate much controversy when he took four weeks off. Former President Clinton took as long as three weeks off.

“People are praying that we are not headed for a deep recession,” Mitroff said. “They want to be reassured. There are serious doubts about him. We don’t know if Bush is there when he’s there.”

For some, the time away from the White House raises questions about commitment.

“I don’t see how a month off is possible when you are excited about what you do and you have a mission,” said Denise Kristy, chief executive of Emerging Technologies & Businesses in San Diego. “It’s just not feasible to remove yourself for an entire month.”

Of course, August is about as close as Washington gets to downtime. Congress is not in session, and many representatives and senators have headed to their home districts.

In addition, presidential vacations can easily be cut short, particularly if some crisis arises, said UCLA professor of management Sam Culbert. Bush’s actions are interesting not because of the length of the vacation, Culbert said, but because it might show how he intends to operate as a president.

“Is he giving away clues about what he thinks of the presidency?” Culbert said. “The message this seems to send is that he will be responsive to issues as they are teed up. But he is not framing and formulating and taking the lead.”

Even if Bush does stay away the whole month, it could prove less than relaxing.

“I was fine, but I was on the phone with the office two hours a day, and I spent two hours on e-mail a day too,” said Jackson of Applied Semantics about his longest recent vacation, which lasted just under two weeks. “It sounds like I’m never a fun guy to be around. I have a wife and two daughters, 11 and 13. We have a place out in Telluride [Colo.] where we go. They would ask if I could go out horseback riding, and I’d say, ‘No, I have a conference call.’ ”

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Little Gain

American workers’ vacation time hasn’t increased much over the years. Average number of vacation days with 10 years of service:

No data available for 1987, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996

Source: Labor Department