There is a nice, lively debate about the merits of ROWE in the comments section of The Globe and Mail. One of the conversation threads that stood out for us was this idea of availability. Here are four quotes from four different comments to show you what we mean:

“We need people to be available, in person as necessary, for ongoing issues, and yes at short notice.”

“I find the problem starts when you need to ask a coworker something, and he isn’t in the office that day.”

“[I]n an environment where you need people to be able to offer answers, feedback and decisions on short notice, you need to be able to predict when they’ll be available. Human beings don’t cope exceptionally well with unpredictable situations.”

“In my line of work there are many disciplines working on a project. Timing and scheduling are crucial. There are times when I need a piping designer to make modifications right away; not when they get back from an afternoon movie.”

One of the big misconceptions about ROWE is that because it gives people control over their schedules, it’s a “time off” program. The assumption is that if someone is not physically present, then they are unavailable, and therefore worthless to the organization. When you think about work in this way, then the two choices are either “at work” (and therefore working) or “out of the office” (and therefore unavailable and not working).

There are two problems with this model. First, you can have everyone in their cubes and in meetings from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and the work still doesn’t get done. Even with 100% percent availability, there is no guarantee that people are engaged. They could be surfing the internet, chatting with their coworkers about what they watched on TV last night, or simply spacing out.

And even if everyone were working the entire time (talk about a fantasy!), the energy people spend on being available is energy they’re not spending on driving results. Whether you want to admit it or not, the simple act of making sure you’re on time every day (and appearing bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in front of your boss and coworkers) consumes physical and emotional energy. In our view, that energy is completely wasted. Put that energy toward results and both employer and employee benefit.

The second problem with the availability model is more of an untapped opportunity. As we know from our personal lives, technology has made the notion of availability a lot fuzzier.

For example, if you want to watch a DVD right now, then you would go to the video store. But if you wanted to watch a video sometime in the coming week, then you might rent it online. So which DVD is more available? The video store DVD is available immediately, provided that the store is open. The online DVD is also available immediately (you could rent it at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday if you wanted to), provided you’re willing to wait a few days for it to arrive. The better method depends on your needs and desires.

A ROWE works under the same principle. It doesn’t mean that your boss can call you at 3:00 a.m. demanding to know where you keep the toner. It also doesn’t mean that everyone leaves at once on a sunny day to play golf. It doesn’t mean that if there is a genuine emergency (as opposed to fake emergencies — but that’s for another post) that no one deals with it. A ROWE means that you get very clear about the business results you’re trying to drive. You plan how to get there and then you let people do their jobs (and live their lives).

Don’t you think that beats “available”?

We’re a big fan of the Huffington Post and their “Peaceful Revolution” column, which is why we’re so pleased that our guest post is up. (We’d like to give a shout to MomsRising.org for their part in this, too.) We’re also thrilled at the opportunity to reach so many people. If you’re visiting us because of HuffPo, we welcome you to the site. (Our recent Five Underrated Posts post is a nice way to catch up on what we’re doing here.) If you’ve been following along for the past few months, and would like to make some internet noise on behalf of ROWE, we encourage you to visit our “Peaceful Revolution entry” and start in with the comments, the buzzing up, and so forth.

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.

We thought we’d pass along this funny story from the trenches of work (and work sucking):

A friend of ours has a “Work Sucks” magnet on his car. When his boss saw it, he said, “Bob, I’m really disappointed in you for having that on your car.” Our friend didn’t think anything of it, but his boss kept commenting on the magnet throughout the day. When he went out in the parking lot at the end of the day, our friend noticed that his boss had taped a note to the magnet, altering its message. It now reads:

“Work is really good and I love my boss”

We’re grownups. And, as grownups, we are not afraid to recognize (and correct) our mistakes.

From this point forward, work is really good and everyone loves their boss.

Thanks to Lisa Takeuchi Cullen for this Q & A on TIME.com. We appreciate the word “kooky” (it’s an upgrade from “crazy”) and we also appreciate her asking the hard questions without deciding out of hand that ROWE can’t work.

As this book and this idea gets out into the world, we expect a certain amount of skepticism and resistance. We want people to be challenged by this idea. We want a healthy debate. If we’re ever going to achieve real work-life balance, then we need an honest discussion about why people are so unhappy with the traditional workplace.

Even if you don’t agree with ROWE, we hope that at least the ideas behind ROWE spark a real conversation about why work sucks. We can’t go on pretending that 8-to-5 in a cube with endless meetings is the best way to work. The world has radically changed in the past twenty years. It’s time for the culture of work to catch up.

One ROWE supporter is running a personal experiment that we’ve been watching very closely. He’s using Twitter to keep track of all of the Sludge he is hearing at his workplace. He’s also asking some very good questions about how Sludge works, what constitutes Sludge and what it does to people at work. He has 56 followers right now. If you want to join in on the fun, go here. In the meantime, here are some of our favorites:

“ Is Sludge (derogatory judgements of coworkers/employees) still Sludge if the Sludgee has performance issues? I say no.”

“7-5 worker praised as ‘model employee’ - doesn’t do a third the work of coworker who works 8-3:30 & labeled “slacker”. WTF? Warped thinking.”

“Sludge Report (midday): Of the half-dozen people I can monitor (and still work), all have uttered at least one Bit o’ Sludge today. TBC”

“Sludge-TASTIC!! Low performer has balls to fling Sludge at one of highest producing workers. It’d be like me teaching physics to Hawking.”

We’d love to see more readers calling out Sludge on their blog posts, Tweets, etc. If you’re out there fighting Sludge, please let us know!

. . . anyone who posts a review on Amazon for Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. Simply go to our Amazon book page and write a review. After you’re done, send us the review (send to caliandjody@caliandjody.com) and your land address and we’ll send you a handsome, signed book plate to put inside your book. We want to hear what the people think.

A big thanks to Frank Vascellaro at WCCO in Minneapolis/St. Paul for their segment Work Sucks! How One Company Aims to Fix It. We love how ROWE is introduced as a ”crazy idea” and they then proceed to show how absolutely rational a Results-Only Work Environment is. Yes, people get to do whatever they want, whenever they want. As long as the work gets done. It works for Mark Wells (the young guy who wants more freedom) and it works for Scott Jauman (the manager who only cares about the bottom line). Both sides win. It’s that simple, people!

Maybe you are here because you saw our 10 ways to increase productivity using a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) mindset on Tech Republic.

Or maybe you are here because you saw our What It’s Really Like in a Results-Only Work Environment post on Brazen Careerist.

But it’s highly unlikely that you are here because you saw both posts.

And so we’d like to do a little internet matchmaking. Tech Republic readers: meet Brazen Careerist readers. Brazen Careerist readers: meet Tech Republic readers.

We think you’ll really like each other. The reason is that whether you’re an IT person trying to get the most of your day, or a young person looking for help in striking out in a new career, both of you have something in common. You both have to deal with the tired, broken, outdated culture of the traditional workplace.

What makes ROWE so exciting is that it makes work better for everyone. It’s not an idea that discriminates based on age or job title or education level. Everyone has a role to play. Everyone can contribute. And if people are contributing, then they should be free to live their lives. It’s a simple idea that works.