Behind the Scenes
August 7th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
It was July 2003 when the sparks first flew. We met each other and knew right away that we were up to no good (at least not the kind of “good” that would be rewarded in the corporate structure we were in!). During our first day of conversation, we had decided to walk away from the old game of flexible work arrangements and create what people really wanted in an office work environment. Freedom…to do their work and live their lives the way they saw best fit. Here are a few things you may not know about those early days of ROWE:
1. At the very beginning of the ROWE journey, we didn’t have any presentations or PowerPoint decks prepared when we went to talk to the leaders that eventually ended up giving the green lights to the first ROWE pilot teams. We had two things: our belief that the workplace was broken and our passion for getting ROWE off the ground.
2. When we created the 13 Guideposts and presented them for the first time, we were told the change would never happen if we kept those intact. We came very close to changing them, but stood our ground. Every Meeting is Optional changing to Some Meetings are Optional…we don’t think so.
3. Once ROWE was out in the open, and no longer an underground mission, it was put “on hold” several times. We were each assigned other work and were not supposed to continue with ROWE until “capacity was granted”. All we’ll say is this: if we would have stopped, capacity would never have been granted.
4. As ROWE started spreading at Best Buy, we had people stopping us in the common areas of the headquarters who said “Please don’t stop what you’re doing. We need ROWE and if you stop, it will never come to us.” If you’re reading this and you were one of those people, this is what kept us going through some really tough times.
5. While we were creating ROWE, we were having fun and smiling quite a bit because we were watching people’s lives change right before our eyes. Uh-oh. Too much fun in the work environment. We were told “You’re having too much fun and people are uncomfortable with that. You need to tone it down.” Did we? We’ll give you one guess.
6. Most importantly, we were two everyday office employees that had had enough. Two employees that decided it was time to stand up to the status quo. We knew we had it in us and weren’t going to give up.
And there you have it. A bit of info in return for the wonderful stories you’re sharing with us. Keep them coming.
[The photo here is us with "Phil" from Why Work Sucks. "Phil" went through one of the very first ROWE migrations at Best Buy and turned into one of our biggest supporters.]
