16th August 2026

Opening Reflection

What Happens When You’re Not There?

We are well into holiday season.

For most employees, the annual holiday is something they look forward to. It is the reward after months of hard work. You switch off the phone, pack the suitcase and hopefully forget about work for a week or two.

But I have started looking at holidays rather differently.

As a founder, I have discovered that when somebody goes away it provides a fascinating opportunity to understand how a business really works.

Because when somebody is absent, you very quickly discover something:

How essential is their role?

Not how busy they appear to be.

Not how many emails they send.

Not how many meetings they attend.

But what actually happens to the business when they are not there?

And sometimes the answer can be rather uncomfortable.

The Empty Desk Test

It is amazing how effectively a business can sometimes continue when somebody is away.

Tasks get picked up by somebody else.

Processes that supposedly required hours somehow get completed in minutes.

Certain meetings don’t happen — and nobody misses them.

Sometimes you discover that something everybody assumed needed doing doesn’t actually need doing at all.

That raises an important question:

When that person returns, is the role still structured in the right way?

Could some of the work be automated?

Could another person absorb part of it?

Could it become a part-time position?

Or, equally importantly, does everything fall apart in their absence and you suddenly realise just how valuable that person actually is?

That is why I think absence can be a very useful management tool. It exposes reality.

AI Is Changing the Equation

AI has completely changed the way I think about productivity.

I am discovering that businesses often employ people to compensate for bad systems.

If you don’t have proper processes, information is scattered everywhere and nobody quite knows how things work, you need human beings constantly holding everything together.

“Ask Sarah. She knows how to do it.”

“John has that spreadsheet.”

“Only Mary knows the password.”

That isn’t a system.

That is dependency.

And dependency is dangerous.

The more systemised a business becomes, the less it should depend upon individual people performing repetitive administrative tasks.

That doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of people.

It means using people for the things human beings are actually good at: judgement, creativity, relationships, leadership and solving unusual problems.

If somebody is spending half their working week copying information from one place to another, I increasingly ask myself:

Why is a human being doing this?

Productivity Is Going to Become the Watchword

For businesses like mine, productivity isn’t some fashionable management expression.

It can be the difference between making a profit and making a loss.

Retail and hospitality operate on incredibly thin margins.

Every unnecessary hour matters.

Every wasted process matters.

Every duplicated task matters.

Every piece of administration that can be eliminated matters.

Saving a relatively small amount each week may not sound particularly exciting, but multiply it across several employees, several shops and 52 weeks of the year and suddenly it becomes serious money.

That is why I think the businesses that thrive over the next decade will not necessarily be those with the largest workforces.

They will be the ones that work out how to do more with less.

And AI is going to accelerate that enormously.

The Holiday Conversation Has Changed

Traditionally, employers worried about employees going on holiday and having a revelation.

They would sit beside the swimming pool, contemplate their lives and decide:

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Then they would return refreshed, walk into the boss’s office and hand in their notice.

The employee had done the reflecting.

Now I think something else is happening.

While the employee is sitting beside the swimming pool, the employer has an opportunity to reflect as well.

How did we operate while they were away?

What stopped?

What didn’t?

What did we discover we could do differently?

Did somebody else perform the task better?

Did technology take care of it?

And perhaps most importantly:

What did we actually miss?

A good employee should come back from holiday and their value should become even clearer.

You should be thinking:

“Thank God you’re back.”

That is a very good indication that somebody is making a genuine contribution.

I Am Not Saying Don’t Take Holidays

Before everybody starts cancelling their flights, I am certainly not advocating that people shouldn’t take holidays.

Quite the opposite.

People need rest.

People need time with their families.

People need experiences outside work.

And sometimes stepping away makes somebody considerably better when they return.

But I do think we are entering an age when simply occupying a position is no longer enough.

Every role needs to create value.

And increasingly technology allows employers to see where that value really exists.

The Founder Has a Different Problem

Talking about holidays has made me realise something slightly embarrassing.

I can’t remember the last time I had a proper one.

I know I should.

I know somebody will tell me it isn’t healthy.

But the truth is I find it extremely difficult to switch off.

I could be sitting on the most beautiful beach in the world and part of my brain would still be wondering what was happening in the business.

Has that delivery arrived?

How were today’s sales?

What’s happening at Brixton?

What’s happening at White City?

Has somebody dealt with that customer?

Could we improve that system?

What are we going to do next?

That is the difficulty with being a founder.

Your business becomes another child.

And it is a very demanding child.

It wakes you up in the middle of the night.

It wants money.

It constantly creates problems.

And just when you think it has finally learnt to look after itself, something happens and it wants your attention again.

Start Young If You Can

This is why I often say to people thinking about starting a business: if you have the opportunity, do it while you are young.

There is never a perfect time, of course.

But entrepreneurship becomes considerably more complicated when you are trying to juggle a business, mortgage, partner, children and all the other responsibilities of life.

People talk endlessly about work-life balance.

I have never really understood how that is supposed to work when you are building something from nothing.

There are periods when the business demands everything.

That is simply the price.

The important thing is knowing whether you are prepared to pay it.

The Ultimate Test of a Business

There is, however, an uncomfortable contradiction in everything I have just written.

If I believe a member of staff’s holiday is a useful opportunity to discover whether the business can operate without them, surely exactly the same test should apply to me.

Can The Black Farmer operate without Wilfred?

That is perhaps the biggest question of all.

Because if the answer is no, then however successful the business appears to be, I haven’t finished building it.

I have simply created myself a job.

The real achievement is building an organisation with systems, processes, managers and eventually leaders that allow the business to continue whether the founder is there or not.

Perhaps that means I need to take a holiday myself.

Not simply for the rest.

But to see what happens when I disappear.

Now that would be an interesting experiment.

Onwards.