We’ve been running polls over at CultureRx and today we’d like to open up the results for discussion. A few weeks back, we asked what was considered coming in “on time” at people’s workplaces. Most recently, we asked what was considered “leaving early”. Here’s what you said:

On time

34% Before 8:30 a.m.

30% There is no such thing as “on time”

27% Before 8:00 a.m.

9% Before 7:30 a.m

Leaving early

41% Before 5:00 p.m.

22% Before 4:00 p.m.

13% Before 3:00 p.m.

13% Before 6:00 p.m.

11% There is no “leaving early” — we leave whenever we want

What we found interesting about these results is the difference between the beginning of your day and the end of your day. It seems that the rules are looser in the morning than they are in the afternoon, that you are more likely to get in trouble for leaving early than for being late.

Our first question is whether or not these results ring true for you. Do 30% of you out there honestly not have to worry about being “on time”? Or is something else at work?

Our second question is why there is a gap in the first place. Why would the traditional work environment have more of a problem with people leaving early than they would with them coming in late? If the goal is to put in an eight-hour day, then what difference does it make where you miss the time?

Thoughts? Insights? Witty comments?

A friend of ours sent us this link to Read at Work and when we saw it, we nearly fell out of our chairs. For those of you who prefer not to click the link, RAW is a website that perfectly mimics the Windows desktop, except that the folders open up to short stories that are formatted as PowerPoint presentations. Finally, you can catch up on classics like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace” while looking like you’re building that next great sales pitch.

RAW is perfectly executed. A casual passerby would be completely fooled into thinking you were hard at work. But there is also something extremely sad about the very existence of this site. When we see humor like this we laugh for a moment and then settle into a mild funk, because it assumes (and rightly) that:

1. When you are at work, you are essentially a prisoner.

2. You are a prisoner at work, and you will always be a prisoner because the culture of work will never change.

3. Your best bet is to laugh at your imprisonment and/or make up clever workarounds as opposed to finding a way to set yourself free.

We know we have a lot of work to do to change the culture of the traditional workplace. And we’re the last people to want to step on a laugh. But we also want you to take heart. There is a better way. Laughter may be the best medicine, but we’re fighting for an all-out cure.

We were pleased to see this post at Episcopal Cafe for two reasons. First, we love hearing other people’s Sludge examples. Lying about being in a meeting because you want to finish your chicken avocado salad is a new one for us, even if the reason behind the lie makes sense. This anecdote is an example of Sludge Anticipation, which is any time you have a socially acceptable excuse ready to cover your ass for when you’re doing something that is socially unacceptable at work. (Like enjoying food when you “should” be working.)

The second reason we were happy to see this post is because ROWE started at a corporation, but the basic principles behind it (that people are adults who should be trusted to do their work and then left alone to live their lives) could apply to other areas of our life. In our conversations with employees at Best Buy, we often heard stories about how the ROWE mindset had started to influence the other aspects of people’s lives.

We know it’s early to be talking about the second wave of ROWE, but then again, why not? And so we’d like to put a question to you:

If you lived in a Results-Only world, how might your life be different? What would your day be like if you had a Results-Only marriage, family, neighborhood association, school board, etc.?

We are trying to cut down on our use of exclamation points, but we couldn’t help it on this one. Forbes.com just posted a rock-solid Q & A with us, and then they had to go crazy and publish a slide show that demonstrates 13 Guideposts of ROWE. Go Forbes.com!

We love the images they used in the slide show, especially the dude reclining in the middle of the grass and the weirdly composed picture of the hipster guy and his spaced-out coworker (girlfriend?) sitting on the file cabinet. (We’re not sure what that last picture means, but we like it.)

At the same time, in the interest of full disclosure, we want you to see another picture of what a ROWE looks like:

Not very exciting, huh? In fact, if we weren’t outside, wouldn’t this scene look a little . . . ordinary?

We wanted you to see this image because we never want people to lose sight of the fact that in a ROWE, you still have to work. It’s not a time-off program. It’s not a reduced-hours program. You still have the same amount of work to do.

Don’t get us wrong: that was a great day. We were glad to be able to work outside at a coffee shop, but we also had things to do that day that were difficult, and stressful, and frustrating. Just like in a traditional workplace. The difference was that we were able to focus our energies on the task at hand, without having to deal with a bunch of nonsense like being on time, or sitting in pointless meetings, or looking “busy”.

In short, a ROWE does not solve all the problems you’re going to have at work. A ROWE solves the unnecessary problems of work, the ones that arise from our broken, outdated work culture. You still have to work, even if work doesn’t have to suck.

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It is now in bookstores.  We’ve been hearing lots of stories about how the book is being sent anonymously to managers, and is the subject of leadership meetings in companies.  This is great news!

The second teleseminar as part of our virtual book tour is on Tuesday, 6/24, and we want you to join us!  For more information and to register for the [FREE!] call on 6/24, please go to: www.authorteleseminars.com/whyworksucks2.html

We are thrilled to be joined on the call by three guests: 

• Dan Pink, author of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, and Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working For Yourself
• Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber.com and author of I’m on Facebook, Now What? and I’m on Linked In, Now What?
• Scott Stratten, HR professor for Sheridan College, online marketing expert, and author of Thank Goodness It’s Monday

Can’t make the live call?  Register anyway, and you’ll gain access to the recording.

See you on Tuesday!

Looking back, we wonder if we asked too much of you in our Design Your Day post. We appreciate those who took the time to put some thought into their ideal day, but we’re taking another run at the same idea with this post. But first, this thought:

One of the great business benefits of a ROWE is that it naturally eliminates low-value work. (Think of the “TPS Reports” in the movie Office Space - you know what we mean.) Low-value work is one of the by-products of a traditional work environment. If time and physical presence are as important as meeting goals and expectations, then having work that keeps you “busy” but doesn’t make you productive is completely acceptable. Most traditional workplaces would rather have you present and accounted for (and running a meaningless report that no one reads) than off doing whatever.

When we say a ROWE naturally eliminates low-value work, what we mean is that you don’t need an efficiency expert to tell you when you’re wasting your time. Even today, you know (and we know you know) what parts of your job serve little or no purpose. People aren’t stupid. They can feel busy work in their bones. And the only reason why people don’t challenge the busy work is because there is no incentive. It’s not like you’re going to get that extra time for yourself. Chances are your boss would just come up with something else for you to do to make sure they’re getting forty hours out of you.

In a ROWE, because you put results first, you’re allowed to test any task to see if it’s necessary. Outcomes drive tasks instead of tasks driving outcomes. If your boss says, “I need those TPS reports by Monday” you have a right (even an obligation) to ask if those TPS really need to be done by Monday, or if they even need to be done at all. If something isn’t driving results, then it’s bad for business. So why do it?

So we’ll put this idea to you in the form of a question. What task that is part of your job would you eliminate? What do you have to do (every day, every week, every month, etc.) that you suspect isn’t serving the greater good? What part of your job would you get rid of that no one would miss?

We were talking with a friend the other day and he wanted to know how the book tour was going. You know, personally. We said that we are energized by the response, and excited that people seem to be engaging with the book, even if they have questions about the contents.

Then he wanted to know what was frustrating about talking about the book. He wanted to know what was the question or concern that we found the most bothersome to answer. In other words, what cheesed us off.

First, nothing really cheeses us off. When we read a blog post comment that calls ROWE a “pipe dream” or us “hippies”, it doesn’t bother us. We’ve heard it all before. And when we hear these comments, we don’t hear the dismissive tone or the casual insult. We hear the sound of someone’s beliefs about work. Beliefs like:

Some people just need supervision

If you give people control over their schedules, they will take advantage

The best collaborations happen face-to-face

And so forth. If these statements were facts (if they had been generated in some kind of Swiss workplace-optimization lab), then we’d worry. But these statements are not facts. They are beliefs that most of us share, but that doesn’t make them true.

However, we do get frustrated when people say things like, “A Results-Only Work Environment sounds great. But it would never work with my job, because you couldn’t measure the results. I do [insert job here] and how do you measure results for that?”

Ironically, this is also the sound of someone’s beliefs about work, although it’s more subtle and much harder for us to answer. The reason why it’s hard for us to answer is that we don’t understand the ins and outs of every job on Earth. We have no idea how to measure results for your job, because we’re not inside your business, tracking its performance goals, jockeying for position with your competitors and trying to survive in your category or field.

But you are inside your business, aren’t you? And your coworkers are. And your boss and upper management and your leaders are. Collectively, you all know what’s important because you’re in the thick of it. If you banded together and had daily, probing questions about what you were trying to accomplish, then you’d know what kind of results your particular job (and every job in the organization) needed to drive.

So the question isn’t, How do you set goals and measure outcomes for [insert job here]? The better question is, Why doesn’t our entire organization have a culture that only cares about results? Why is my boss as concerned about my getting to work on time as she is about whether or not I actually do my job? Why do we have quarterly performance reviews when performance questions come up all the time? Why is 360-degree feedback this huge, elaborate ritual that freaks people out instead of being a natural part of our daily routine?

The answer to those questions is culture. The reason why people can’t even imagine setting goals and measuring results for their job is because the traditional culture of work doesn’t put a premium on results. The traditional culture of work puts a premium on a mixture of results, keeping up appearances and obedience. (Which is fine if you go for that kind of thing.) By putting results first, a ROWE changes everybody’s mindset about work. And when you are only judged on results, the entire organization shifts its focus. You figure out how to set goals and measure results because, quite frankly, it’s all you’ve got.

This post is for you managers out there. Without a doubt, a Results-Only Work Environment really puts managers and leaders to the test. Because you’re no longer keeping track of when and where you work (and because you have to get crystal clear about goals, expectations and deliverables), managers find themselves having to grow and change after they say goodbye to the traditional work environment.

We don’t see this as a negative. In fact, a lot of Best Buy managers we know have found ROWE to be liberating both personally and professionally. They find themselves able to focus more of their time and energy on the work as opposed to playing hall monitor.

In any case, we encourage everyone to head on over to this forum post to see how managers are talking about ROWE, and to put in your two cents.

Amy Tiemann at Mojo Mom interviewed us for their most recent podcast. We had a great discussion about what a joke flextime is, and how we all need to move the work-life balance debate forward. We also talked about Sludge, which always makes us happy. Best of all, Amy had read the book, which allowed us to go beyond the basics. Good stuff. We hope you agree.

We have an exciting announcement. Work-life balance guru and BusinessWeek reporter, Michelle Conlin, has invited us to be guest experts on her blog at BusinessWeek.

In a recent post, Michelle said Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It was “this year’s best book on work-life balance.” She has also invited readers to ask us specific questions about how people can use the Results-Only Work Environment mindset to make their workplaces better. Click on the link above to get access to the post. We will be answering your company-specific questions a few times a week.

Here’s a sample of what people want to know:

I would like to know how I can get my company to seriously look at your techniques. I’m in IT and I work for a place that has applications that need to be supported 7am-6pm Mon-Fri. I just changed to this job from a company that allowed me to work from home for 7 of the 8 years I worked there and since coming to this new employer, I’ve had health issues that allowed me to work the majority of the time from home as well; however, it is not this employers policy to allow this under normal circumstances. This is what I want to change–I have had awesome reviews and I’ve worked from home 98% of the time–I can do my job from home-I even went through a major conversion remoting in. I have less stress, more privacy for my conference calls, less interruptions and when I’m waiting for something, I can throw in a load of laundry. It is WIN-WIN - how do I get them to see this?

Thanks again to Michelle for the high praise and for the wonderful opportunity to help advance this cause. We’ll keep you posted on how it goes, but we also encourage you to visit the site and make your own contribution. Together, we can make ROWE the status quo.