Oh! I am just (next week) wrapping up leave! First - congratulations! My husband and I just had our first kiddo earlier this year and went through a similar "what do we do" sort of moment. We managed our time and workload by going to a "one week on, one week off" schedule, alternating between the two of us. Oh aside from all this - definitely pay money for Huckleberry (or an app like it). It will help you just manage your life. :-)

A lot of this is borrowed from Manager Tools "How To Go On Vacation" podcast. [1]

Here's what worked and what didn't for me:

What worked:

A. Name a clear "number one." [2] In my case I named two since I have a tech leadership role. I called out one of our lead architects as my "number one," and my peer director as an HR focal.

B. Make a list of everything on your plate, and your team's plate. For each item, write down a small summary of it, and then figure out who owns it. Tell that person they now own that work item. If you don't have a clear owner, the "number one" you chose becomes the owner.

C. I gave my team ~6 months (after we told family), a three month reminder, a one month reminder, and then "it's go time" when our baby showed up three weeks early. :-)

D. I took the list of projects and made a company-wide (not public) shared read only doc that had "if you're looking for X, contact ___," and put at the top and bottom "if you need anything that's not on this list, talk to ___" (your number one).

E. My husband and I both took off the first two weeks, then started the "on/off" schedule. I set two different out-of-office notifications when I'm out. The external one said I was out for paternity leave, promised baby pictures, and had the two contacts (my number one and director). The internal one said the same as the external, but also had a link to the "coverage doc" that explained project-by-project who to reach out to. It also said in blunt instructions: "No news is good news. Please make a decision without me. If you can't, or need help, contact (number one). If you need air cover, contact (director). If we will do irreparable harm to the business or you have a business continuity or ethics concern, text me. I won't be checking email or slack."

F. Turn off notifications / uninstall email / slack etc on your phone. Enjoy those first two weeks. :-)

G Book a "catch up" meeting ahead of time with your number one and any key contacts for when you return.

J. Book 1:1's with key contacts for every week you return from leave. DEFINITELY DO THIS. YOU WILL BE OUT OF TOUCH. THIS IS A WAY TO LESSEN THE PROBLEM AND MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS.

Some warnings:

M. After a few weeks we "got the hang of it," and caved on the "I won't check in" rule and started lurking on slack. Once people figured it out they started slacking me, which started a feedback loop. Don't start the feedback loop.

N. A few times I tried to work a day on my "off" weeks because it felt like "I got this!" or something urgent came up. It wasn't a good use of time or a good idea. I was out of sync with the team, and about 1/3 of the time behind b/c I hadn't scrolled through -all- of the slack channels to see that issue X had already been addressed.

O. You're pushing work down. That means that folks are going to have to push work off of their plates themselves. They should not turn around and delegate something you are delegating to them. You should expect them to take a task from you, and then stop doing one or more other tasks by either delegating those "smaller" things to someone else, or dropping them to the floor ("Mike's on paternity leave, I'm covering for him, sorry I can't do your TPS report" is a fair answer). Emphasize that delegation model.

[1] https://www.manager-tools.com/2015/05/how-go-vacation-part-1

[2] You should have a lieutenant / number one anyway just for succession planning / hit-by-a-bus reasons.