Why We [Heart] Tim Ferriss
May 21st, 2008 by Cali & Jody
It’s not because he featured us on his blog today. (Although we can’t thank him enough for that.) The reason we love Tim is because he embodies one of the core truths behind a Results-Only Work Environment:
It’s your fundamental right to have control over your time.
Just because your company is paying you to produce a certain amount of work, it doesn’t mean that they get to tell you where to be and when. Back in the old days, where work could only happen in a certain place, then making you show up at 8:00 a.m. and sit at your desk for the day made sense. (It sucked, but it made sense.)
Today, technology allows us to break those old norms. It”s ridiculous to rush to work to be there at 8:00 a.m. and then sit at your desk reading the paper for a half hour. (If someone needs you, they can call your cell, right?) It doesn’t make sense to come in to the office at all if you can handle your work from home, or a coffee shop, or wherever. Most of all, it doesn’t make sense to put such a huge premium on the time we spend working. The only thing that should matter is results.
It’s up to all of us to challenge our assumptions about what work looks like. We need more people like Tim to stand up and say, “I have a life. I’m going to contribute what I have to contribute, but once I’ve made that contribution, then I get to choose how to live.” We also need a workplace culture that supports people standing up for their time. (That’s what a ROWE does.) But first we need people to believe that they actually have this right.
So that’s our question of the day. Who owns your time? And if you don’t own your time, do you believe you should?
Interesting that you say the following:
“Just because your company is paying you to produce a certain amount of work, it doesn’t mean that they get to tell you where to be and when.”
I made almost the exact same statement to my supervisor the other day and he shot back with a reply that I must say, I can’t totally disagree with, although it was a little disheartening. His response:
“The company is not paying you for ‘x amount of work to be done’, they are paying for your time and the right to tell you what to do with that time. If you finish your work faster than other, they don’t want you taking off for the day, they want you taking on extra projects, and based on that you get raises. Your raise is your incentive to be happy and work harder, not being able to go and do whatever you want when you get ‘x amount of work done’”
While it was a little upsetting to hear it put this way, its hard to disagree. If a company gives us “x amount of work” and we finish that work and do nothing extra, but instead take the newly found time to go and do whatever we want, why should they give us a big raise at the end of the year? We didn’t go the extra mile, why should they act as if we did?
I’ll give you an example… I do consultations daily that take up about 3-4 hours, I could do those from anywhere, but our company is not a ROWE nor does it allow telecommuting. I also do some tech work that is assigned to me each day that could take anywhere from 1-4 hours depending on the worker. If I finished in an hour and went home, why would my company feel obligated to reward me? I didn’t do anything extra, I just did my job and doing what your paid to do isn’t worthy of reward, going the extra mile and taking on assignments you didn’t have to are reason for reward though. They don’t want me taking off the 3 hours a day, they want me to stay and do the stuff they “didn’t” assign to me. At the end of the year or when review time comes around, they take into account how much more i’m doing and give me a raise.
So I guess the question becomes, at least in my company, do I want the flexibilty of a ROWE, to do what I want when I want as long as I get my duties done and thats it, or do I want the raises that are associated with sticking around for an extra few hours and taking on odd jobs or what not that I was not assigned to, but have the ability to do anyway.
As a somewhat obvious caveat, I have to say that there are abviously industries that wouldn’t for as ROWEs. People in these industries are then getting paid for their time, during which they are expected to do work. A good example of this is the foodservice industry or emergency services. They’re paid for their work but also their time as well.
(From Aaron’s comment) “The company is not paying you for ‘x amount of work to be done’, they are paying for your time and the right to tell you what to do with that time. If you finish your work faster than other [sic]…they want you taking on extra projects, and based on that you get raises. Your raise is your incentive ”
Aside from being emasculating and quite disempowering, consider the basis of such an argument. Is this is an incentive program or a punishment program? In this scenario, the reward for your ability and efficiency is the expectation for you to begin doing somebody else’s work, and, hopefully, you will get a monetary bonus somewhere down the line.
Consider this:
When you hire a plumber, do you pay him (or her) to do a specific job? Or do you pay him for the right to tell him what to do with his time? Would it be reasonable to demand the plumber instead work on an electrical problem when he arrives–since you get to dictate what he does with his valuable time? Or, once the plumber has finished with the plumbing task, would you command him to go work on the roof if he expects a reward?
Moreover, is it likely the plumber, knowing full-well the value of his time and the limits of his abilties, would accept such demands?
The incentive program for the plumber is additional work–the ability to produce and be properly paid for what he produces, and to continue generating more business from you and other customers. He attains additional work, as a reward for his excellent service and efficiency in solving plumbing problems. He is further rewarded for his excellence by being able to charge a higher price than other less qualified or less talented plumbers (this is a raise–monetary reward based on ability and results, not on time put in).
There seems to be an accepted, unspoken social premise that reverses this concept when someone is employed by a company rather than an individual. While reversing this concept, however, few seem to have realized they have, by default, exploited another: Serfdom.
Michael, excellent post!
Cali & Jody consistently attempt to shed light on the issue of time vs. results. The salaried worker is most penalized because of this conundrum.
Question: What if an organization actually strategically analyzed, assessed, and planned to determine organizational goals and objectives? To go a bit further, if an organization decides “x” employee must produce “x” amount of measurable work in a year and will be compensated as such, what is the difference if that employee meets or exceeds the goals in 1 month or 1 year? The budget is already set to pay the employee based on the organization’s “desired” annual expectations - not time needed to produce the results (there is that ROWE term again). And if the organization desires more results…desire them.
If anyone thinks for one minute because an employee is in an office behind a desk is “always” being productive or striving to go above and beyond or even working at all is naïve. And if you do not believe the aforementioned is true, then your argument for the current system is lost. You have people wasting time, being inefficient, and being fraudulent (in terms of waste) all the time. A ROWE removes that mysterious game of who is performing and who is not….based on something you can actually measure – results.
I would rather have an employee work for me rather than working to create the illusion he/she is working for me.
Aaron:
Thanks for speaking up, even if what you had to say was somewhat skeptical about the basic principles of ROWE — a thoughtful conversation among people who are listening to each other is far more valuable than blanket agreement.
I think your boss has a point: your company DOES choose to pay people for their time rather than paying for their results. And that’s an acceptable way to operate: you may not enjoy it much, but there’s nothing fundamentally evil about it.
There IS however, something fundamentally ineffective about it. The company’s true job is to produce profits for shareholders, and the time you spend contributes nothing to profits — only the results you achieve do that! By measuring and rewarding the wrong behavior, they are missing out on opportunities.
From years of experience at thousands of companies we know that when you pay people for their time in the office rather than for results delivered, that people will spend many wasteful hours in the office daydreaming, browsing the internet, or talking with coworkers about their golf game. We also know that it leads to unhappy employees, poor work-life balance, and other problems.
As for promotions and raises, those could be based on the amount that you manage to deliver in a fixed amount of time — OR they could be based instead of the actual results you deliver. For your part, you might choose to work harder and thus be in line for a bigger raise, or you might decide that you’d rather take a little LESS money if it allows you to spend time with your family. If your company is hospitable to both of those thoughts (and the full spectrum in between) then it has a larger pool of potential employees to draw from and can find additional talent that other employers may miss.
To sum it up, I think your company is fully within their rights to hire you on the basis of the time you spend instead of the results you deliver. But in doing so, they are harming themselves and they will eventually be out-competed by a smarter employer with happier and more productive workers.
– Michael Chermside
Very interesting discussion by everyone involved.
To throw my two cents into the pot, will someone please defend/attack the position that ROWE is simply the original concept of “Piece work” (see wikipedia for an excellent background overview), but dressed up with current technology to enable today’s office workers? Cali? Jody? Anyone?
Talk amongst yourselves; I’m suddenly feeling verklempt…
I can’t keep up with all the Michaels.
I though it was interesting that you (michael numero uno) said, “….and, hopefully, you will get a monetary bonus somewhere down the line.”
In my particular company, I am very confident of getting compensated for my hard work. I do realize, however, that some companies make the promise of raises if you work harder and they never really come..
Additionally, many carpenters, plumbers, painters and others do charge by the hour.. and for good reason. They want to #1. Make sure they don’t screw themselves and #2. Avoid angry customers. All the time in my business, web development, we give quotes on based on the job and the customer gets mad because we charged them a lot of money for something that they didn’t think took long enough to warrant that money. If, however, we charge by the hour and give the customer an estimated number of hours with some margin of error they know what to expect at best and at worst.
Obviously there are pros and cons to both systems from a customers and an employers perspective.
You can actually apply this same theory to your employer if you think of them as a customer paying you to do a job. They base the value of a job on 2 things in most cases, the availability of people to do the job and the time it takes to do it. They will very, VERY rarely, base pay on the value of the job itself.