When Everyone is out and Everything still needs to move

It’s that time of year again. Out-of-office replies stack up. Decisions get delayed. Calls turn into “let’s pick this up after the break.” And suddenly, everything important is supposed to happen in September.

We act surprised. But we shouldn’t be. Summer is not a disruption. It’s part of the calendar. So is December. So is Easter. So are school holidays in every key region.

Some of our clients have seasonal businesses on top of all that. Their attention shifts around peak campaigns and trading cycles. For them, availability doesn’t just drop, it disappears completely. Which makes the question even sharper:

If we know when people won’t be available, why do we still plan as if they will be?

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Consulting, delivery, and the Q3 illusion

If you’ve worked in consulting long enough, you know the pattern. Projects kick off in July and stall immediately.Proposals are due mid-August, but key stakeholders are in the mountains. Decisions drift into “after the holidays”, sometimes all the way into Q4.

One of our clients has a commercial rhythm that aligns almost perfectly with the global holiday schedule. Easter, summer, and year-end are all black-out zones. That leaves about seven months each year where real decisions can happen. If you don’t build around that, you’re not planning. You’re hoping.

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Some things cannot be avoided, but they can be absorbed

I’ve had proposal deadlines overlap with vacations more than once. Sometimes we could

have done better. Sometimes the roles involved simply had to be present.

I’ve also seen the opposite: teams continuing smoothly through absence. Progress didn’t stop just because someone was away. The structure held. There was enough clarity and overlap for the work to continue. Not because everything was perfect, but because it didn’t depend on one person being online every day.

That’s what makes the difference. Not having backup plans, but having systems that don’t need them every time.

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Getting through the quiet season without losing the plot

Instead of treating Q3 like a failed delivery window, it helps to think of it differently. Use the quiet. Use the space. Sharpen the pipeline. Draft content. Build alignment. The conversations might slow, but the preparation can speed up.

Also, not everyone on a project is truly available, even if their name’s still on the plan. Coverage means more than being “not on holiday.” It means having people who can actually make decisions, move tasks forward, or take ownership for a few days without asking permission.

And every project will hit a vacation phase. The only question is whether that pause turns into a setback. Teams that rotate, hand over properly, and trust each other tend to keep moving. The ones that rely on heroic effort don’t. Vacation doesn’t break projects. It reveals how breakable they already were.

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Final thought

We all know that everyone will be out at some point. The calendar is not the problem. The setup is. The strongest teams keep going while people step away. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s normal. They’ve built for it. And they’ve let go of the myth that constant presence is the same as progress.

So if everything pauses because two people are on holiday, maybe it’s not time to chase them down. Maybe it’s time to look at how the work is structured and whether it was ever ready to run without them.