I had this experience and things worked out just great. Because the management team, and people around the team, was in place before I got sick. It was just so beautifully to see that things actually continued without my hands on presences. Sure it was not perfect, but things went on their normal way, more or less.

It is in the good times you lay the foundation for handling challenges.

I actually found that even though I didn’t have a system intentionally put into place for this incident, that my employees really stepped it up and took care of things above and beyond, without my really needing to explain too much. I think they felt comfortable crossing areas because we had such a tight knit group that had specialists, but everybody always saw what the other team members were up to and how they handled things on a daily basis. This actually led to a promotion of one of my employees who actually became a business partner as well after some more time.

Interesting what you learn about your team when something like that happens.

Thank you for post, good to see you`re well.

Which case do you think is the most prevalent in business and how should one go about acquiring a partner?

Furthermore, what is the correct number of backup partners to have?

Garmerk: The big surprise here was that I took the time to ensure that ordinary business processes would be covered in my absence, but I failed to provide system to ensure leadership and decision making if I wasn’t around. If I had a partner who could have jumped in with the skills and confidence to start handling all of my e-mail and phone calls, it would have been easier. Lesson learned: it’s not enough to establish procedures for the services you provide, the leadership element needs to be capable of working without you, too.

What steps do you take to rely less on your employees?

The business that relies heavily on a single man has a single point of failure. Which is not a good sign for a healthy business and can often stymie your growth (or mere survival) severely, if cannot prove to be fatal. As a business owner you always need to have a contingency plan in place:
1. Identify critical processes in your business and have a clear and unambiguous understanding on who is responsible for running those processes.
2. What if the person responsible for these processes becomes unavailable abruptly for whatever reasons. Do I have a substitute in place? The substitute doesn’t need to have the same level of capability as the person he should substitute does, but the person should be able to pick up things from where they were left off. Well documented business procedures would indeed prove to be the lifesavers here.
3. Delegate your key responsibilities (strategic decisions as well) from time to time to your trusted employees. This will prepare them for taking up reigns of business when you are unavailable rather than just wait until you make it back to business. Also make sure that you leave your employees to their own devices so that do not look up to you to make mundane decisions. Also, train them to be accountable for whatever action they take. as long as they do so, they are free to decide