Shortcuts: Planning for a Needed Break From Work

JOSEPH BUBMAN took six months off his job as a management consultant two years ago to work with a charity in Kenya and Guatemala. It was something he had dreamed of doing and he spent almost a year planning it.

“It exceeded my expectations,” he said. “I was able to have a unique life experience and it afforded me opportunities I wouldn’t have once I returned to my employer. I would absolutely do it again if I could.”

It may seem unwise, in these economically shaky times, to request time off, even without pay. Some people fear that the mere act of asking will make them look less committed than their colleagues. Or send a signal that they are thinking of leaving their current job. Or hurt their chances for promotion or a raise.

While none of that is necessarily so, it’s more important than ever to plan how you will approach your employer and to think in terms of a mini-sabbatical — a month or two to do something you have always dreamed of doing — rather than six months to a year.

First, find out if your company has a sabbatical program and what kind. According to an overview of employee benefits this year by the Society for Human Resource Management, 5 percent of about 500 companies surveyed offered paid sabbatical programs in 2009. That dropped to 4 percent in 2013. But unpaid sabbatical leave grew to 16 percent from 12 percent during that time period.

That reflects a trend that Barbara Pagano, co-founder of YourSabbatical, which helps companies and individuals develop sabbatical programs, has observed.

“Companies are slowing down the activation” of such programs, she said, while “I see more employees trying to create their own sabbaticals.”

If your workplace has a program, you are in luck. If not, start researching.

First of all, said Pat Katepoo, founder of WorkOptions, which is aimed at helping employees negotiate for flexible work time, you would be wise to not even ask for a sabbatical unless you have been at a place four or five years.

“A one- or two-year employee is not in a strong negotiating position,” she said.

And make sure you are considered a valuable employee, as well as have some sense of how supportive your boss might be.

“How does she react if you say you need to pick up your kid or bring your mother to an appointment?” Ms. Katepoo said. That might indicate how receptive she is to the concept of a mini-sabbatical.

Six weeks is a good time period to keep in mind for a mini or short-term sabbatical because it allows a full month to go overseas or immerse yourself in a program, with one week at either end to get ready and decompress.

But don’t just shoot off an email to your supervisor asking her to consider the idea. It takes a lot more work than that.

“A sabbatical takes a good deal of research,” Ms. Pagano said. “I would suggest a year to prepare.”

Mr. Bubman would agree. He started working for Vantage Partners, a management consulting company, in 2007 and in 2011 took a six-month sabbatical doing conflict-management work in Guatemala and Kenya with a nonprofit.

He laid the groundwork for his proposal early, first by letting it be known he had an interest in international work and “that if I didn’t have the opportunity to do it, I wouldn’t be around much longer.”

This might not work for everyone. First of all, Mr. Bubman was in his 20s, without a family or a mortgage, and could afford to be flexible. More important, he said, he worked for a company “with a unique culture where being transparent about long-term plans is valued.”

Nonetheless, he knew just expressing an interest wasn’t enough. He tried to be a model employee, even going so far as to volunteer for less glamorous assignments. Once he proposed the sabbatical in March 2010, he agreed not to leave until the following year.

Mr. Bubman’s sabbatical had some unusual aspects. His company had a relationship with Mercy Corps, the international development charity he worked for during his sabbatical, and it donated money to the nonprofit to help pay his stipend.

Needed at Microsoft: A Catch-Up Artist

About an hour into the conversation, someone asked about Microsoft. The company seemed to be treading water, the mantle of high-tech leadership had passed to Apple and Google, and investors were impatient with Microsoft’s stagnant stock price. The question: Would Mr. Gates, the Microsoft chairman, consider going back to run the company?

That question comes to mind again, after Microsoft announced on Friday that Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive, would step down within a year.

The prospect of Mr. Gates’s riding to the rescue at Microsoft is intriguing but highly unlikely. Steven P. Jobs, the other celebrity entrepreneur of the early personal computer era, returned to Apple in 1997 and remade it. But in June, Mr. Gates brushed aside any suggestion that he would again lead Microsoft. The messiah option, he insisted, was not on the table. He had moved on, he said.

Mr. Gates stepped down as C.E.O. in 2000 after a bruising courtroom battle with the Justice Department. A federal court ruled that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the nation’s antitrust laws.

“Gates felt he was being penalized for success,” says Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “He left at a critical time, when Microsoft was facing new challenges, and he didn’t really look back.”

Mr. Ballmer was Mr. Gates’s old friend and chosen successor, but there is no obvious successor to Mr. Ballmer. One thing is clear: “Being the next chief executive of Microsoft isn’t going to be an easy task for anyone,” Mr. Cusumano says.

Mr. Cusumano is the co-author of two books about the company, “Microsoft Secrets” and “Competing on Internet Time,” which chronicled Microsoft’s assault on the commercial pioneer in Internet browsers, Netscape.

Mr. Cusumano and his co-author on the Microsoft-Netscape book, David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, are now writing a book that examines the strategy and leadership lessons to be learned from three technology executives, Mr. Gates, Mr. Jobs and Andrew S. Grove, former chief executive of Intel.

There are examples for Microsoft to follow: a onetime technology leader has experienced a revival each decade since the 1980s. Back then, Intel was staggering under the Japanese challenge in the memory chip market. I.B.M. stepped in to make a 20 percent investment because Intel was a valued supplier, and the help gave the chip maker some financial breathing room. Intel then made the leap into microprocessors, the brainy chips that power personal computers.

In the 1990s, I.B.M. almost went under as the profits from its mainframe business were gutted by competition from low-cost PC-style computing. But I.B.M. retooled its mainframe business and moved into higher-margin software and services businesses.

In the 2000s, it was Apple’s turn. Under Mr. Jobs, the company first stabilized its desktop computer business with some nifty designs. Then Apple went on to transform the digital music business and smartphones, with the iPod, the iTunes store and the iPhone. And the iPad created the modern tablet market.

Can Microsoft pull off a similar revival act in this decade?

Microsoft is different from the other three companies in one important respect. It is facing a crisis of technology leadership, but not a financial crisis. Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and Office productivity software remain immensely profitable. By contrast, Intel, I.B.M. and Apple were fighting for survival. In each case, it was clear that drastic action was needed — and it was taken, successfully.

Microsoft’s seeming strength, according to George F. Colony, the chief executive of Forrester Research, has proved a weakness.

“I would argue Microsoft does have a financial problem, and it’s been the fear of losing those massive profits from Windows and Office,” Mr. Colony says. “By doing everything it can to try to protect those profits, Microsoft has taken a defensive position for more than a decade. And in technology, if you play defense you’re going to lose.”

Still, thanks to the success of its mainstay businesses, Microsoft has been able to afford multibillion-dollar investments in newer fields like Internet search, digital media players, smartphone software and, recently, tablets.

The problem for Microsoft has been that it has often been forced to make those investments while playing catch-up. In the search and smartphone markets, all the snowballing effects of leadership, brand recognition and consumer habits that helped Microsoft in the PC market are working against it as it tries to catch Google and Apple.

Past success can obscure new opportunities when emerging markets or technologies don’t operate by the same rules as a company’s tried-and-true products. And Microsoft has suffered from that kind of corporate myopia. In an interview with me in 2007, Mr. Ballmer acknowledged the problem.

“One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made over time is not wanting to nurture innovations where I either didn’t get the business model or we didn’t have it,” he said.

In his memo to Microsoft employees on Friday, Mr. Ballmer pointed to the challenge ahead for the company. At 57, he has decided to make way for a successor who can guide “our transformation to a devices and services company.”

No mention of software as such. But a big part of the job for Mr. Ballmer’s successor will be re-engineering Windows and Office for delivery over the Internet onto all kinds of devices including smartphones and tablets, according to Mr. Yoffie of the Harvard Business School.

Even if that is successful, the profit margins of the PC days will probably never return, especially when competing against free and low-cost alternatives, like Google’s Android operating system and Google Docs.

“But unless Microsoft makes that transition with its core products,” Mr. Yoffie says, “the company is in danger of heading into the kind of crisis it is trying to avoid.”

Fed Stimulus Still Needed to Help Recovery, Bernanke Says

While acknowledging the risks of historically low interest rates and the Fed’s aggressive policy of buying government bonds to help stimulate the economy, Mr. Bernanke said in testimony that “a premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but also would carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery.”

After his opening statement, however, Mr. Bernanke seemingly opened the door a bit wider to tapering down.

Under questioning by Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who chairs the Joint Economic Committee, Mr. Bernanke said the Fed could prepare to “take a step down” in the next few meetings if the outlook for the labor market improved.

“It’s dependent on the data,” he said. “If the outlook for the labor market improves, we would respond to that.”

Mr. Brady asked if the tapering could begin before Labor Day, prompting Mr. Bernanke to say, “I don’t know.”

“We are buying a certain amount of assets each month,” he continued. “We are looking for increased confidence and in steps respond to that.”

According to a summary of the Fed’s last Open Market Committee meeting released Wednesday afternoon, Fed policy makers were still tentative about dialing back on their efforts to boost growth at their session on April 30 and May 1.

“A number of participants expressed willingness to adjust the flow of purchases downward as early as the June meeting if the economic information received by that time showed evidence of sufficiently strong and sustained growth,” the minutes of the meeting stated. However, views differed on just what that evidence would be and whether a tapering was indeed likely.

While “a few members expressed concerns that investor expectations of the cumulative size of the asset purchase program appeared to have increased somewhat since it was launched last September,” others members of the panel were less convinced, according to the minutes.

“In contrast, a few other members focused on evidence that market expectations about the total size of the program had changed little,” the record showed.

While there was no clear consensus on policy, most members agreed on the need “to communicate clearly that the pace and ultimate size of its asset purchases,” would depend on outlook for the economy, a stance echoed by Mr. Bernanke in his testimony earlier the day.

In his opening statement, Mr. Bernanke said that since last summer, “financial conditions in the euro area have improved somewhat,” helping lessen the headwinds faced by the American economy as well.

He noted that the federal government’s fiscal policy had become “significantly more restrictive,” even as the Fed had pursued a looser monetary policy. The expiration of the payroll tax reduction in January and tax increases, as well as automatic spending cuts imposed by Congress and lower military spending, will collectively “exert a substantial drag on the economy this year.”

Speculation had been rising in recent weeks that the Fed might be preparing to taper its bond purchases, which total $85 billion a month. The bond-buying program has been credited with increasing growth, but some observers worry it could create a bubble in the prices of assets like stocks.

At its most recent meeting this month, the Fed said it was “prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its asset purchases,” prompting some analysts to speculate that bond purchases might be reduced in the coming months.

“In considering whether a recalibration of the pace of its purchases is warranted,” Mr. Bernanke told the Joint Economic Committee, the Fed “will continue to assess the degree of progress made toward its objectives in light of incoming information.”

Stocks on Wall Street surged after Mr. Bernanke’s remarks but pulled back in afternoon trading.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 22, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the timing given by Mr. Bernanke of a potential Fed move. He said the Fed could prepare to “take a step down” in the next few meetings, not the next few weeks.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 22, 2013

Medical Malpractice: Pretrial Motion Not Needed to Challenge Med Mal Expert

A medical malpractice defendant does not have to object to the qualifications of a plaintiffs expert through a pretrial motion under the MCARE Act, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

Legal Documents Needed to Enforce Your Life Decisions

Many of us still remember the case of Terri Schiavo, the former Pennsylvania woman who became a cause celebre as her husband and her parents fought a highly publicized and prolonged series of legal disputes as to whether to terminate Schiavo's life support.