ROWE Discussion over at Manager Tools
June 16th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
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.
Those forum posts are why, if I ever have to go back to a corporate America type job, I might just quit life and be homeless.
I work for a media company and for the entire time I’ve worked here we’ve been ROWE. All that matters here is that the work gets done. We have no office, no dress codes, no hours … we don’t even have titles. Sure, everyone has an area of responsibility but never is the excuse “that’s not my job” acceptable. More important than who is responsible for what is that we all understand what needs to get done and that we work towards that.*
And it works. I’m more invested in this job and the work I do now than I ever was at a job where I had to be in at eight and was expected to stay until five. If I can get my work done in an hour, I know that I have the rest of the day to myself. So I do everything in my power to get the work done so I can enjoy my day. And I care about the quality of that work as well, because just sitting in one place day after day is never an excuse. I can’t say “well you see me here working.”
Previously, when I was in IT, there was no incentive to get my work done early. If I was finished in an hour or in eight hours, I still had to sit at that desk and “look busy” or else I was labeled a “slacker.”
I don’t know why the office culture is so broken. Your book is sitting on my desk in my to read pile between Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) and The Big Picture. I can see that it’s broken because the smartest, most creative people I’ve met have left the corporate environment.
ROWE can and does work. And all that BS around “we’re not ready” or “maybe in the future, but not now” is just a set of excuses made by people who have spent their careers cultivating the wrong set of skills. They’ve learned to navigate office politics, or how to make their boss feel important, or how to sit through meetings. And they’ve learned that they can judge the people under them by how long they sit at their desks or how well they do in meetings. They never have to do the hard work of figuring out “does that person actually add value or do they just sit at a desk ten hours a day.”
And why would they? They came up in a system where the metrics are broken and the whole incentive structure no longer make sense. When navigating the office culture is the way to keep and advance a career, then actually moving the organization in the right direction becomes a secondary consideration. So those are the skills that the organization teaches and that doesn’t make a lot of sense. And that’s why I never, ever want to go back.
Anyway, I really enjoy the blog.
*We have one unROWE like element. A once a week meeting that’s mandatory for those of us in Los Angeles. It’s a pretty small trade off.
Don’t know if you’re KenRadio fans but here’s a segment on telepresence’s acendancy -
http://www.kenradio.com/content/view/1432/1/ -
might require login
The time has come. “ROWE” is in and dictatorship is out. I am the director of a Nutritional Services department for a medical center. I love the concepts outlined in the book and I can easily see where production personnel could have an easy transition to a “ROWE”, but what about the cashiers and servers in the cafeteria? Those are “time sensitive” positions. I would also love to present this book to the guys up front, but how could a nurse be placed into a “ROWE” due to her required presence for direct patient care. There probably is a way, and if we can figure that out, we would have a more complete picture. Comments?