Design Your Day
June 9th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
In the first Results-Only Work Environment training sessions, we used to do what we called the Calendar Exercise. In the exercise, we asked people to go up to a calendar we had posted on the wall, and mark down what days they would like to work at the Best Buy campus (green), what days they would like to work off-campus (yellow), and what days they would rather not work (red).
What was cool about the exercise was that there was never a day when people on the team weren’t working. You might think that the majority of people would want the whole weekend off, but in fact there were a number of yellow, and even green, dots on Saturdays and Sundays. There ended up being a lot of red (not working) dots on the weekends, but they were distributed throughout the rest of the week more evenly than you might imagine.
This was one of the factors that helped reassure management about ROWE. They were encouraged to see that people genuinely wanted to contribute (no one went up to the calendar and covered it with red dots). They also noticed that there was never a time when someone wasn’t working. Leaders could see that in an “always on” economy, there could be a huge benefit to having their employees’ efforts spread out across the entire week.
By the time you get to our most recent migration, however, the calendar exercise has long since disappeared. This spring, when we helped transform J.A. Counter & Associates, Inc. from a traditional work environment into a ROWE, we still talked to people about taking control of their time. We still emphasized the importance of doing whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as the work gets done. But we didn’t teach that principle in terms of the calendar. What changed?
What happened was that one day, one Best Buy employee challenged the nature of the exercise. He stood up and said, “I want to put a green dot on a Wednesday, and a yellow dot, and a red dot.” He explained that he could see how in a ROWE, every day would be slightly different. If he were truly allowed to put results first, then he might decide one hour to the next where he would be and what he would be doing.
His insight was one of the huge turning points in the history of ROWE. From that point forward, we realized that the true power of ROWE was giving people complete freedom to design their day. As long as the work got done, they were free to make decisions about their work and their lives on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour, even minute-to-minute basis.
So here’s our challenge to you: working under the assumption that the logistics have all been worked out, and setting aside whatever overall reservations you have about the feasibility of ROWE, how would you design your day? If you had complete control over your time, what might your day look like? When would it begin? When would you work? Where would you work? What else would you like to accomplish? What might you not have time for now that you would build into your life?
Post your day in the comments, and please, no pooping on other people’s dream day. In a ROWE, we don’t judge people for how they decide to use their time.
Great challenge. I have a business that is already largely similar to ROWE but there are areas we could improve, and this is one of them.
I would start the day off early - 6:30 am or so, getting some private work done in a quiet office. In my dream world, everyone would get in by 10 so we could have some face time. Then I would take off to watch a matinée with my girlfriend (who in this world would also be in a ROWE) before finishing work at home.
There are two challenges (if you guys feel like helping with ‘em) that hold us back. One is that as software developers our face-to-face interaction is often so rich and valuable that minimizing it is counterproductive; it’s often very spontaneous and risking that feels dangerous.
The other is that we have two offices - one is 6 time zones away. To collaborate effectively we need some overlap in the day - my afternoon is their morning so I have to be very “on” during this time.
Isn’t the whole point of a ROWE that each and every day can be a “dream day”, and we can set them up however we’d like, as long as the work gets done? That would mean that today’s dream day could look how I would want it to be for today; and tomorrow could fulfill tomorrow’s dreams. There can be more than just one kind of dream day for all of us. Cool, huh?
I don’t do mornings; not really. So, on my ideal workday, I’d get up around ten, make tea, and check my work email to what’s up, and if it’s anything that needs face time in the office.
I’d send a few emails, call a few colleagues on the phone to find out what’s up and if materials for mail-outs are ready on time etc. Then I’d decide whether I go into the office or work from home.
I’ll do my thing (whatever is needed that day) in either place, and if there’s no emergency or desperate hurry, I’d intersperse it with answering comments on my various online communities, and in the mid-afternoon, when the Americans start their workday (I’m at GMT +1) and slack off in their offices (heee!), I’d participate in Daily Entertainment in my favourite online community. That always offers food for thought, and lots of inspiration.
I’m on Instant Messengers all the time anyway, so it doesn’t really matter whether the people that ping me are work people or people from my unpaid online projects. During office hours, especially during the times of the year when I’m working for-pay projects where I deal with customers directly, of course the work phone calls, IMs, emails etc. have right of way and come first. I do my work, but that doesn’t mean I can’t multitask as long as all my work contacts get what they need ASAP.
If I was in the office, I’d go home sometime in the afternoon, do my shopping or run errands on the way home; if I was working from home, I’d go out and do the sort of things that you need to go places for.
In the evening, the priorities would turn around; I’d still be available for work requests if any turn up, but I’d mostly mess around with my private online projects.
There’d be days when all is going according to plan and nothing needs my input or immediate attention on which I’d stop working early and meet my best friend (who is a free eBay trader, so works her own odd hours) at the Starbucks, or at the cinema for a movie, or just for a walk, or to go somewhere by bike.
Also, there’d be days when I’d announce I won’t be available at all; there’s probably a bigger errand to run (drive to IKEA with a friend and then build all that I have bought etc.), or I need to go see people outside the city, or there’d be visitors from somewhere (possibly even online friends dropping by in Real Life; they do that and I like it!) that I’d show around and spend time with.
Thing is, I have much of that in my life already. I have used the economic slump around 2002 to go on half-time, and never came back from it. I’m an utter hedonist and minimalist living in a small apartment with a cat, no spouse, kids, car, mortgage, or other reasons for full 9 - 5 self enslavement. I value my free time much more than more money or all those things other people have.
The great disadvantage, however, is that I still have to log hours. So, to get to do my own thing, I have to make sure I’m not available for work — I can either work, or attend my own projects, or do both in the fear of being caught at doing something not strictly work related while logging hours.
If I had complete freedom to multitask according to the needs of my work, I’d be available for my co-workers much more than I am now — almost every working day, from 10 in the morning to 5 or 6 in the afternoon, with no more than short breaks in availability or online presence for transit, or brief errands along the lines of ‘get more coffee’.
There’d be no reason not to send off the big mailouts in the evening as to save system capacities; no reason not to process new entries into our catalogues and send off the PDF proofs for an hour or so every night, so I get the answers from the customers in the morning and can get going on the issues that open up right away.
At the moment, I would never volunteer to do such a thing; why should I sacrifice my ‘own’ time to doing things faster and more efficiently for my work? Why should I volunteer to promise availability during the times when I’m not loggin work hours? They’re not paying me for it, so they have no right to get my immediate attention at any old time. I have, in fact, trained them with snark and the relentless logging of every minute I was on the phone with work during my time off to best leave me alone outside the time I marked on my weekly schedule as ‘I will be working’.
Things would work much better for my co-workers and all the work projects I have if I was allowed to multitask and balance work and private projects according to need, not time. Work tasks would get done faster, my colleagues would get their spontaneous problems solved much more spontaneously, timing for mail-outs and PDF proofs would have to be less rigid, which means that everybody else whom I now marshall relentlessly into delivering according to MY schedule would have much more freedom to do their own work and balance their own demands as well.
They would win. I would win. If only they’d trust me to do it.-
All - great dream days! And yes, in a ROWE, every day is your dream day.
Calendar Exercise is a great option to find out the humans’ attitude to ROWE!!!