When I Grow Up…
September 24th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
It won’t surprise you to know that one of our favorite commercials of all time is When I Grow Up. We have a few additions for the next version:
- When I grow up, I want to be shamed for taking an hour and 20-minute lunch.
- When I grow up, I want to sit in traffic for 2 hours every day to go to my gray cube of happiness.
- When I grow up, I want my boss to tell me when it’s okay for me to spend time with my family.
- When I grow up, I want everyone to stare at me and shake their heads when I get into the office at 8:45.
- When I grow up, I want to ask permission to go to the doctor.
How did we get to this place where we have little to no control over these things? How did we get to this place where we have no say over how we spend our time from 8:00 to 5:00?
There’s a problem with the demands/control equation in our lives.
Your demands include anything that requires your time - your job, your hobbies, your errands, your kids, your friends, etc. And people’s demands are growing by leaps and bounds. Here’s the thing: In a traditional office environment, where you have high demands and low control, life is hectic and miserable. You’re trapped in a system that piles on the demands but denies you the control to meet those demands. In a ROWE, there are still high demands, but there is also high control. Life is hectic but manageable. We’ve heard the following comments from ROWE employees:
- “It makes a big difference to be on the phone with the doctor scheduling an appointment and just be able to take the first time they offer, instead of trying in vain to find something before 8:30 or after 4:30.”
- “My sister is flying into town tomorrow and she asked me if I could pick her up at the airport at 1:30. I was able to say “yes” without even thinking because I have that ability now.”
- “My husband called to see if I could have lunch and we did. I never once looked at my watch - I was able to just enjoy our time together without feeling stressed out about being back to the office in an hour.”
- “I do all my grocery shopping on Wednesday mornings now - and no one’s there! I zoom up and down the aisles and don’t have to worry about pushing through all the carts on a Saturday or Sunday.”
- “I can finally show my son what it’s like to live spontaneously and make a living at the same time. We can do fun things anytime, not just on weekends - and that’s how life should be.”
- “I used to never feel like I could take part in [my local community organization] because I never knew when I’d get the time off to do my part. Now I’m able to contribute all the time and that makes me feel more human.”
High demands, high control - that’s what it’s all about.
Which area of your life do you feel the most demands on your time and the least amount of control on managing that time?
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Event news: CultureRx will be speaking about ROWE at an event hosted by FlexWork Connection, Career Partners and YourOnRamp on Oct. 16. The event will be held at UC Irving: The Merage School of Business. Get more information and register here.
I think it will be very interesting to see how the current financial crisis affects the progress of ROWE. I’m sure quite a few of us are a little nervous about having jobs in the next couple of months.
I’m at a government contractor here in Maryland, have three kids, two of which are special needs, in my middle 40s with a mortgage we just got, and a wife who is working as a sales clerk at a local Kohls. ROWE would be great so I could spend time dealing with my kids issues, but in the current environment, I am a little nervous.
Every time I think about what our employees used to go through to get permission to take care of their personal lives, I just cringe - I think “how could we have done that to people?” and it was especially strange for me as a young supervisor to have someone my mother’s age asking for permission to leave early to go to the doctor. But that was just how things were done. Not anymore.
Feedback from my employees indicates that finally being treated like an adult is one of best things that has ever happened to them.
I work in an environment that claims to be open to the ideas of ROWE, but are, in fact, absolutely dedicated to the entrenched norms of the “usual American workplace”. So they are “all talk, no action.” And this place has actually won national awards for being a great place to work!
For me, the “standing meeting” (let’s say it all together now “Aaaarggghhh”) is what is the most demanding of my time. I have no less than 9 standing meetings each week. Most of these are to recap what happened last week in the time between those 9 meetings. And I have to prep at least another 5-6 hours for these recap meetings, using each supervisor’s preferred “status report template.”
Bottom line: we move forward at a snail’s pace, if at any pace at all. And then we wonder why so many of our ambitious goals aren’t met by the end of the year. So we have yet another meeting to find out. And then we don’t change. And so on. Sigh.
This is powerful food for thought and it’s heartbreaking, really.
When I dream of my kids growing up and entering the work force, I do not dream of them working where who they are and what’s most important to them must be sacrificed for their jobs. I do not dream of them being slaves to a time clock or having controlled bathroom breaks.
And then I struggle with this idea of ROWE for “kids” (or the next generation) — is it an indulgence? Have they yet paid their dues? I mean come on… the rest of us have earned the right — the privilege — to work for results only. Our work ethic is proven. What do these kids have to show for anything?
And then I snap out of it. And think that those of us who believe in ROWE, who manage with ROWE…wouldn’t we want to help our “kids” avoid the pain that we went through?
Of course we would.
And so my dream continues.
ROWE is the way of the future. And I hope that the next video is the one where our kids are advertising the feature benefits of ROWE, creating hope amidst those who feel so hopeless.