People on the Street

For our first installation, we have a reader named Jessica Heiken, an employee of a Fortune 250 company. Here’s what she has to say:

C&J: After reading Why Work Sucks, tell us what attracts you to ROWE.

Jessica: “People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer’s time, or the company’s time.” This is what attracts me to ROWE the most. The idea that we can push aside all the nonsense and get really clear and focused on the things that must get done. I started my career in sales, which is one of the few places where the ROWE mindset exists in traditional companies. I was set up with a home office, given a specific geography, and had a very clear objective to meet every quarter: my sales number. My company didn’t care how I got there but they cared very much if I didn’t. In the last 18 months, I have switched gears and companies. I am passionate about the new work that I am doing, but for the first time, I have to report to a corporate office. I don’t miss working from home, but I wasn’t prepared for all the unwritten rules of the office, all that Sludge stuff. I definitely wasn’t used to having people keep tabs on me. Sludge is such a waste of energy, and I love that the first step of a ROWE migration is to eradicate Sludge.

My experience gives me insight into all that would be wonderful and all that would be challenging about life in a ROWE. Work is still work, no matter where or when you do it. I know how difficult working from home can be, and how much energy it requires to provide structure and motivation for yourself. I know that results-only is demanding. I know that ROWE will not improve the lives of people who hate their jobs. But I also know that we need ROWE. Our companies are full of people that are very good at tasks, but don’t have a clue how to define and achieve specific results. It’s a waste of potential. In a global economy, we cannot afford for our employers to get less than the most impactful results out of the work we put in.

C&J: You’ve said that the company you work for is very results-oriented, but that there’s a big difference between “results-oriented” and “results-only”. Explain.

Jessica: Within my organization, “results-oriented” looks like this: people in leadership positions are judged almost entirely on their results, while the individual contributors are judged on their tasks and their effort. Leaders are very clear on their objectives and what success will look like at the end of the year. Unfortunately, when you get down to the individual contributor and middle management levels, the focus is still on the task. This is not to say they aren’t trying to focus on results, but they’re going about it the old-fashioned way. Setting performance objectives is a very formal, HR-driven, annual process that everyone in the company participates in. It’s all about the process; the culture remains unchanged. Too many employees see it as an annoying task to complete once a year and then not look at again until next year. The process fails to produce results because they haven’t committed to really changing the culture.

C&J: Which of the 13 Guideposts from the book do you think Corporate America is furthest from? Why?

Jessica: “Nobody talks about how many hours they work.” I think we are furthest from this Guidepost because measuring work in units of time is so easy - for managers and for employees. In talking to people about ROWE, I’ve found that the idea that work can be done anywhere is very easy for people to accept. They have seen enough remote work arrangements to understand that concept. What is much more difficult for people to accept is the idea that work should be measured and not time. They do not have a model for that. They don’t know how you can tell if people are doing enough unless you know how much time they’ve spent working. There seems to be a fear that other people will not do enough work in a ROWE. And the flip side of that is the fear that employees will be asked to do too much without the contraints of a 40-hour work week.

Part 2 of Jessica’s interview coming on Wednesday…

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Event news: A reminder that we’ll be speaking this week, along with Marcus Buckingham, at an event in the Twin Cities hosted by Ideation Consulting. For more information and to register, click here.

Media news: We interviewed with the Rick Gillis Employment Radio show over the weekend. To hear the podcast (which includes references to beer drinking, Fantasy Football, and a fun Sludge Fest), click here and scroll down to the podcast section.

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