ROWE in Leadership Turn
November 16th, 2007 by Cali & Jody
Nice mention today in Miki Anderson’s Leadership Turn blog. We talk a lot about how a Results-Only Work Environment is a “people’s movement” as opposed to coming from the executive level. While this is true, we’d also like to acknowledge the leaders at Best Buy who enabled this change. Cheers to those who recognized that ROWE could be good for business as well as good for individual employees.
We also think it’s important to note that this tension between what’s good for business and what’s good for the individual employee is divisive and unnecessary. Many so called work-life balance solutions (flextime, telecommuting, etc.) are underutilized by employees and/or reluctantly supported by employers because of the assumption that working in a non-traditional way is not a good idea. Employers feel like they’re making a concession or a special case. Employees feel like they’re taking a career risk by not being in the office when everyone else is.
The success of a Results-Only Work Environment proves that making employees happy and driving business outcomes are not mutually exclusive. The work-life problem is not a zero-sum game. So hats off again to Brad Anderson and Best Buy. To the rest of you executives out there, maybe it’s time to think about a new way of working.
Cali and Jody, I’m honored that you read my post and agree that Brad Anderson deserves great kudos for enabling a culture that encourages such ground-breaking change.
I first wrote about ROWE and what managers needed to do to embrace such changes at http://www.rampupsolutions.com/blog//?p=289.
I look forward to reading more about the both the revolutionary and evolutionary efforts accomplished as a result of your culture. Long may it thrive!
ROWE is in many ways a parallel and overlapping movement with consumer directed healthcare. Since the healthcare benefits are one of the major reasons why folks choose firms — and their lack of portability is one of the major reasons they stay at a poor firm, perhaps the CDH and ROWE movements should more formally banded together moving forward. FWIW: The Medical Banking Project takes these concerns very seriously. http://www.mbproject.org