Read the leave chart

In June the leave chart goes up, and it is the most closely read document in the building.

Nobody calls it that. It is a grid on a wall or a shared tab. Names down the side, weeks across the top, blocks of colour where somebody will be away. Schools are expected to close around the end of this month, so by now every household in the company has decided something and put it in writing.

Read the blocks.

Who has the weeks the schools are shut, all of them, the weeks every parent asked for. Whose request came back approved the same day, and whose is still marked pending in the first week of June, which is an answer of its own. Who has taken the awkward fortnight in the middle of nothing, again, and calls it a preference. Who is never away in the same week as the founder, has never been told why, and knows.

I have never seen a leave chart discussed in a meeting. I have never met anybody who had not read one.

An org chart is drawn to be shown. It goes in the deck, it gets tidied before the board sees it, and what it describes is reporting.

A leave chart is drawn to be used. Nobody polishes it and nobody presents it, and what it describes is standing: whose weeks are protected, whose can be moved, whose absence rearranges a week and whose is simply noted.

Where the two disagree, the room believes the leave chart.