Read the out-of-office

Quiet day. One tell, and it is in everyone's inbox this week.

Write to a regional company from about the seventeenth onwards and read what comes back. Not the dates; everyone gives the dates. Read what the message says about who may decide while the sender is away.

There are three versions.

The first says back on the fifth of January and nothing else. No name. The sender has left and taken every decision with them, and anything that needs a yes will wait a fortnight. It is the most common one, and from a company that sells into Riyadh, where the season is in full swing and nobody is on holiday, it is a closed sign in the window of an open shop.

The second gives a name and a number. A colleague, in the market, who can act. It is rarer than it should be, and it tells you something the org chart never did: this person was trusted to hand something over, and someone was trusted to catch it.

The third says for urgent matters please contact, and then names nobody, or names someone whose own reply says back on the fifth. It is the most honest of the three. It describes a company that knows decisions should be delegated and has not decided to whom.

Read enough of them across one company and a chart appears that nobody drew. It shows who is allowed to decide in someone else's absence, which is a sharper test of seniority than a title, and it shows where each chain ends in a name and where it ends in a date.

An organisation describes itself most truthfully in the message it sends when nobody is there.