Your moment of peaceful, productive reflection begins… NOW!
September 15th, 2007 by Cali & Jody
Big corporations have a hard time letting go. Check out this pilot program from Intel. The intention is to give people the “quiet time” they need to be thoughtful and creative:
“The pilot group – 300 engineers and managers, located in two US sites – will adopt a ‘Quiet Time’ agreement. Every Tuesday morning they will all set their email and IM clients to ‘offline’, forward their phones to voice mail, decline all meetings, and isolate themselves from ‘visitors’ by putting up a ‘Do not disturb’ sign at their doorway. Thus, for half a day each week they will have the ability to focus on the ‘thinking work’ that researchers have shown is critical to creativity, innovation, and to faster, better production of output.”
Okay, so let’s see if we’ve got this straight:
Quiet time agreement entered (check).
Email set to “offline” (check).
Meetings set to “decline” (check).
Doorway set to “do not disturb” (check).
Engage Tuesday morning thinking work… now!
But, of course, like any top-down, non-organic effort to manage change, what the company gives with one hand it takes away with the other:
“Of course, all this is tricky stuff. These people are doing a critical job as a team, and messing with their communications culture is not something we do lightly. There will certainly be permitted exceptions, and the pilot is being monitored closely to find out what they are and how to optimize the methodology for best effect.”
So, in other words, Intel is all for this quiet, half-of-Tuesday thinking stuff, but we also need “permitted exceptions”. And it will all be “monitored closely” lest things get out of hand. So go head employees! Rock it out! And, maybe—if you’re really, really good—after quiet time, you’ll get a graham cracker and a half pint of milk.
In a Results-Only Work Environment, you don’t have to deal with this kind of well-meaning nonsense. You are not treated like a child. Employees have complete control over when they work, and as a result they have the power to decide how to best use their time. At Best Buy, this has led to an unprecedented level of engagement and commitment. It’s also common sense. If you have to monitor and control how a knowledge worker thinks, then why did you hire him or her in the first place?
“ROWE” is what L. Ron Hubbard first set down as the sole effective basis for management of any organization 50 or so years ago. Noting a long known fact that, as he puts it “production is the basis for morale” (in other words, ‘idle hands are the devil’s play ground’) he points out that the only effective manager manages by statistics. That is, a measure of the difference between what the worker produced yesterday (or last week) and what he or she is producing now. And, he notes, time and time again, that is a worker is consistently “upstat” as he calls it, the wise manager — and the one who really intends to keep production on the upswing — will, in effect, simply leave the worker alone. Even if he, or she, wears a ‘dirty t-shirt’ to work, sits with his or her feet up on the desk, and comes in three hours late every other day.
In short, it is PRODUCTION, not hours, appearance, a seemingly organized desk, or anything else that matters.
ROWE is simply restating the obvious that Mr. Hubbard pointed out long ago. You need to manage by statistics which record production. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I’m sure that the owners of this blog will be aghast at the suggestion that they owe anything to Mr. Hubbard, or that he anticipated everything they have to say of value. But, all you have to do is read his Management policies and you’ll see it is true.