Wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal online about why the performance review system is broken by Dr. Samuel Culbert, a consultant, author and professor of management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles. Here are a few criticisms of why performance review systems in a traditional work environment suck (our words, not his), and how these same problems are neutralized by a Results-Only Work Environment:

1. A performance review is about the person and the work, instead of being only about the work.

As long as the job is done well, on time, and within legal and ethical rules, does it matter how it gets done? Performance reviews tend to focus on people’s strengths and weaknesses. In other words, you may be getting the job done, but if your boss doesn’t like the way you’re getting your job done you can get called out in a performance review.

In a ROWE, managers aren’t focused on work styles. If you want to pull an all-nighter to meet your deadlines, then that’s up to you. It’s none of your boss’s business, and they aren’t going to judge you for having an unorthodox work style. This frees people up to work in ways that work for them, instead of in ways that fit into the company’s norms.

2. Performance reviews require standardization, when little is standard about our global, 24/7 economy.

As human beings, we’re wired to judge. And often we’re wired to judge badly. Companies strive to create a formal review process, and then put that process in the hands of people who can’t help but have personal biases for (and against) their employees. Worse, bosses often aren’t aware of their own biases.

A Results-Only Work Environment doesn’t eliminate biases, but it does minimize their effects. If your workplace is dedicated to results instead of being a time-based or presence-based work culture, then it’s harder for managers to reward people who don’t do their job, but who simply play the game.

3.  Performance reviews are an event, instead of a continuous discussion.

There is a date marked on the calendar for the (drum roll, please) performance review.  As it nears, many people get a nauseous feeling because they a) have no idea what to expect or b) had an experience last year where they thought they knew what to expect…only to get socked in the stomach with something out of left field.

In a ROWE, performance discussions happen all the time.  There are absolutely no surprises with the performance review because you always know where you stand. 

4. Performance reviews give bosses all the power, which distorts the assessment of the work.

As Culbert notes, bosses want their employees to answer to them. This leads to leads to “inauthentic behavior, daily deception and a ubiquitous need for subordinates to spin all facts and viewpoints in directions they believe the boss will find pleasing. It defeats any chance that the boss will hear what subordinates actually think.”

In a ROWE, bosses use their power to coach rather than make demands. They want the truth, because only an honest assessment of the work can lead to results. When people are honest about the work, then they don’t need to pay lip service to hierachies and corporate customs.

Interestingly enough, what Culbert recommends is performance “previews,” which he notes “are problem-solving, not problem-creating” and generate “discussions about how we, as teammates, are going to work together even more effectively and efficiently than we’ve done in the past.”

Sounds a lot like life in a ROWE.

P.S. A big thanks to Ray Brown for the tip on this article!

In fact, according to 2003 figures, in certain metropolitan areas, the average rush hour driver loses as many as 93 hours per year to travel delay - equivalent to more than two weeks of work, amounting annually to a virtual “congestion tax” as high as $1,598 per traveler in wasted time and fuel. Nationwide, congestion imposes costs on the economy of over $65 billion per year, a figure that has more than doubled since 1993 (according to the 2005 Urban Mobility Report).

That’s all about to change.

In May 2006, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced its National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network (the “Congestion Initiative”), a bold and comprehensive national program to reduce congestion on the nation’s roads, rails, runways, and waterways. One major component of the Congestion Initiative is the Urban Partnership Agreement (”UPA”), through which the USDOT is partnering with selected metro areas of “Urban Partners” in order to demonstrate strategies with proven effectiveness in reducing traffic congestion.

The Urban Partners that were selected to be part of this initiative are: Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle. Each partner will be executing strategies in the areas of tolling, transit, technology, and telecommuting to help relieve congestion.

We are very, very proud to announce that we’ve been selected by the MN Department of Transportation to assist with this important initiative. We will be selecting companies on, or near, the 35W corridor to partner with to migrate all, or part, of their employee base to a Results-Only Work Environment. As you all know, in a ROWE, work is no longer a place you go - it’s something you do. People aren’t expected to physically come to the office at 8:00 a.m. or stay until 5:00 p.m. The focus is on results - not physical presence or amount of hours worked. Those of you in the Twin Cities know what a mess 35W is during the morning and late afternoon - our goal is to have free-flowing traffic on 35W all day, every day.

Twin Cities readers: to make this happen, we need your help. We need you to send us contact information for people in your company that would be interested in being part of the UPA initiative. Who might that be?

• Government Relations - what a perfect way to engage in the community and affect a big item of public concern: traffic congestion.
• Human Resources - ROWE has been proven to affect two major HR focuses: productivity and retention.
• Business Line Leaders - you might know of one or two business line leaders that are forward-thinking or have a particular interest in being on the cutting edge of MN movements.

If we end up signing on a company for the UPA project that you refer us to, we’ll send you a signed copy of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. Send contact info to caliandjody@caliandjody.com and let’s get rid of rush hour on 35W once and for all!

P.S. The MN Dept. of Transportation is funding all of our work with Twin Cities companies - that means companies that are selected to be part of the UPA project get free ROWE migrations. That’s right - FREE.

Here it is - part 2 of our interview with Dan Pink, best-selling author of The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need.  Enjoy.

C&J: We talked about one of our favorite lessons from Johnny Bunko  in Part 1 of our interview  with you - “There is no plan”.  Our second favorite is “Leave an imprint”.  This is one of those things everyone thinks about when they watch an inspirational movie or hear a moving song…but then the moment is gone.  How do we keep it alive and who is the best example of someone you know that’s living this lesson?

DP: I think part of it is simply recalibrating what it means to leave an imprint.  I’m not talking about solving the climate crisis or fashioning world peace.  We leave an imprint when we create a product or service that people didn’t know they were missing.  We leave an imprint when we leave a customer delighted and better off than she was before our encounter with her.  We leave an imprint by writing a book like yours that helps people rethink whether “working” requires being in a physical office for a prescribed number of hours.

There are lots of people out there leaving an imprint in many, many ways.  Paul Farmer of Partners in Health is doing amazing work in Haiti.  Jessica Flannery of Kiva is reinventing the financing of microenterprises around the world.  Jeff Bezos has helped readers and writers alike by making books easier to buy and sell.  Oprah Winfrey has turned on millions to books and inspired millions more to live their best lives.  The list is long.

C&J: Your previous book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (a NYT, BusinessWeek, and WSJ bestseller), has this quote: “Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the last 300 years of industrial society - our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value” (Pat Kane, author of The Play Ethic, p. 185).  In your travels, do you see this playing out and how will it help us create more value in the business world?

DP: Well, recently I was at the Motley Fool, which has used playfulness to reinvent the notion of financial information and advice.  That’s a great example.  In general, a sense of playfulness and joyfulness is fundamental to iterating new products, services, and experiences.  That’s always been important.  It’s doubly so in a downturn when consumers are going to be resistant to opening their wallets.

C&J: You are an expert on the changing landscape of the business environment and the people in it.  What is the biggest reason for change that companies need to respond to - attraction and retention of Gen Y, productivity concerns, etc.?

DP: Of course, companies - like the human beings who inhabit them - resist change.  We all do.  As Isaac Newton taught us several centuries ago, inertia is a powerful force.  What I’ve seen is that companies typically change for two reasons.  First, the cost of *not* changing is enormously, enormously high.  When the two options on the table are a) change or b) go out of business, most choose (a).  Second, I’ve seen that some companies change even when not facing imminent death when they have an especially inspired, forward-thinking leader.  A.G. Lafley is a good example of that.  P&G wasn’t dying.  But he managed to reinvigorate the company and change the way it approached its business.  Often, it’s both a crisis and a leader who steps up to deal with it.  Lou Gerstner at IBM is one good example.  Here’s hoping our next President is another.

We love Dan’s response about “leaving an imprint” - ultimately, this is what life is all about.  During ROWE migrations, we often see individuals make the ROWE leap because they do want their lives to be more meaningful.  How are you working toward leaving your imprint?

We’re sure most, if not all, of you know of best-selling author, speaker, and awesome thinker: Dan Pink.  His newest book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, is a phenomenal hit that we enjoyed very much.  We first met Dan when he was part of our book tour for Why Work Sucks, and we made an instant connection.  He’s unlocking new thinking about the track we take to get into the business world and asking the question we love to ask: Why have we been doing things the way we’ve been doing them?  His advice is straightforward, fun, and we love it.  So here it is - a little back and forth with Dan Pink…enjoy.

C&J: You’ve written some very thought-provoking books in the last decade, but nothing quite like Johnny Bunko, your latest piece.  Why did you write it?  We want the real version of why you wrote it, not the media-trained version.

DP: Ha!  I’m flattered that you think I even have a media-trained version.  The overarching reason is pretty simple.  I thought it was a project that would be interesting to do, that was timed right to the market, and that might help a few people.

The more specific reasoning behind it is twofold.  First, I spent two months last year in Japan studying the manga industry.  Comics in Japan are pretty amazing.  They’re ubiquitous - in every convenience store, in subway stations, gobbling up entire floors of bookstores.  And you can find manga for just about every topic - not just ninjas and high school romance, but everything from time management to politics to history to investing.  Meanwhile, manga was becoming extremely popular here in America.  But nobody was creating it for all ages or on topics.  So I thought: Why no use this incredibly powerful expressive form to reinvent the business book?

Second, I began to think about the role of books in a world where people have so many other sources of information.  Think about careers.  All the tactical career information - what keywords to put in a resume, what questions to anticipate on an interview, etc. - were available online.  Putting that sort of info in a printed book didn’t make much sense.  But I did think there was value to readers in creating books that offered the sort of insights that couldn’t be Googled - strategic, big picture advice.  That’s what I tried to do by building the book around six key strategic lessons.

C&J: Yes, the lessons!  We have two favorites.  The first is “There is no plan”.  This is a bit unsettling (as in, “Did you say NO PLAN??!!”), but very important.  How do we come to terms with the fact that, as Diana (the super cool guide we wish we all had) puts it, “X might lead to W and W might lead to the color blue and the color blue might lead to a chicken quesadilla?”

DP: Let’s take a step back.  What I - er, Diana - means is that people make decisions for two kinds of reasons.  Instrumental reasons are when we do something because we think it’s going to lead to something else.  Example: We major in a subject not because we like it, but because we think it’ll help us land a job upon graduation.  Fundamental reasons are when we do something because we want to do it.  Example: We take a job - even though we have no idea where it will lead - because it allows us to do interesting things with great people.  The point here is that instrumental reasons simply don’t work.  It’s too tumultuous out there.  The people who really flourish are those who make career decisions for fundamental reasons.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky.  Making decisions for fundamental reasons means you have to live with a certain amount - sometimes a huge amount - of ambiguity.  Is that easy?  No way.  But in this situation, as in so many others, you have to have a follow-up question: Compared to what?  It’s clear that from both a personal and professional perspective, dealing with real ambiguity is far more effective than embracing a false sense of clarity.  Just ask the folks at Lehman Brothers.  Or Bear Stearns.  Or Enron.  Or…you get the idea.

C&J: So we have to ask - is the Johnny character based on anyone you know?

DP: No.  But he is like many of us - someone who’s struggling to figure things out and find his place in the world.  And Johnny’s not supposed to be me either.  However, in some ways, the book is a letter to my younger self.  It reveals a few of the things I know now that I wish I’d known 25 years ago.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview with Dan, where he reveals more about the six lessons and the main reasons he thinks companies need to focus on attracting and retaining Gen Y, and start proactively addressing productivity concerns…

Both sides of the political spectrum are starting to agree that the next president will need to be an environmental or “green” president. What exactly that means is currently in dispute, but there is no question that the Environment (for lack of a better term) is now a permanent part of our political discourse.

Changes in the economy and the demographics of the workplace are bringing another low-flying issue into the fore. As Sue Shellenbarger notes in her blog, The Juggle, for the first time in U.S. history, both candidates have laid out platforms on work-life policy issues. It’s quite possible that our next president will also have to be the Work-Life President.

We have complicated feelings about government’s role in work-life issues. As we noted in this post about government teleworkers, we’re glad there are laws on the books that support employee schedule control. The Family and Medical Leave Act is a good start, even if in an authentic ROWE, many of its provisos would be irrelevant. You don’t need to protect people’s time if you’re measuring them based on results.

At the same time, as we wrote in our post about the FMLA, top-down laws aren’t going to change what people BELIEVE about work. Just check out the comments in Shellenbarger’s recent piece about the two candidates. You would think that jobs are a form of charity (as opposed to an exchange of money for services) and just having one should make you fall to your knees in gratitude.

Still, our next president is going to have to do something. Our labor laws were designed for a 20th-century, manufacturing economy. Now that many of us are knowledge workers (and 24/7, global knowledge workers at that), we need to embrace our new economic realities.

Why do we still have exempt and non-exempt workers?

How can you have overtime if your brain is always on?

Why do we still cling to the number 40 as a measure of what’s a full-time (aka “real”) job?

The laws will have to change someday, but even if they don’t in this next administration, our next president can provide leadership in how we talk about work. Instead of haggling over time, let’s bring back that American can-do spirit. Let’s talk about what we want out of our workforce, out of our family lives, out of communities.

In tough economic times it’s tempting to sell ourselves short. Just pay me and I’ll keep my head down and my mouth shut. But tough times can also be an opportunity to rethink how we’ve been doing things. We might end up with a work culture that looks different than it does now, but given how much work sucks, would that be such a bad thing?

As I celebrate another birthday - really just a day on the calendar - I see it as another “marker” in my life, and a time to reflect and dream.  Happy times, sad times - how many times do I have left?

Everyone has a journey - and a story of what their life is, and what it isn’t.  We all have the choice to continue to make change, and make our life what we dream it can be.

It is at the juncture of a birthday marker that I am bound to pause, reflect, and find my own truth - my own.  Not the truth of anyone around me.  Not the truth of what others want me to become, but what I want to become.  Not the truth of the life others want me to lead, but the life I want to lead.  Not the truth of others who think they can write my life better.

But instead, it’s my pen that will continue to write my own life.

And, it’s at this marker that I once again take stock, keep and not keep.  Keep what is dear and true to the vision of my life, keep what I love, and not keep what I don’t.

We dance around inevitable change all our lives - glancing the other way when opportunities present themselves to move us forward.  We accept our place, and believe what others say about us - who we are as a parent, friend, wife, husband, partner, child, sibling and co-worker - and make that the actual and ultimate truth.

And, we risk losing ourselves in others’ truths.  As life moves quickly along, we suddenly exclaim “Who am I and how did I get here?”

A birthday is simply a day on the calendar - but it can be an important day to reassess, reflect and decide.

Decide to leave behind regrets.  Decide to embrace joy.  Decide to leave behind that person inside that settles for the status quo.  Decide to live.  Decide to act.

Today, I take a moment to own the day that marks my birth and be thankful for family, friends, health, and a really good glass of chardonnay (preferably Cakebread).

We work and live in a ROWE.  We couldn’t ask for a better situation for running our business and doing the work of migrating teams to ROWE, being with our families, and living our lives exactly the way we want to.  We evangelize ROWE every day - in the media, speaking around the country, in individual companies, in almost every conversation we have.  We want everyone who works in an office environment to wake up and be full of life.  We experience a range of emotions every day when it comes to ROWE - sadness, frustration, and anger when he hear/read about talented people that are being crushed by the weight of the work culture, and complete happiness when we watch people/hear about people taking their lives back.

But for all this evangelizing, for all this desire that we have to make ROWE the status quo, we have members of our immediate families that are struggling in the most non-ROWE of environments.  For us, this is a big part of the inner frustration we go through on a daily basis.  The people closest to us, people we would donate organs to if the need arose, aren’t able to experience this thing we’ve created - while thousands of others benefit.  It keeps us awake at night and, along with all of your stories, gives us more and more motivation to keep fighting for a better way.  Let’s dive deeper…

First, the two people in our immediate families that we’re speaking of don’t have it easy to begin with.  Because they work in environments that are about as non-ROWE as you can get, they are “watched” just a little more closely because they’re related to “those Why Work Sucks women”.  They have tried to bring ROWE thinking into their companies.  Relative #1 is buried in work and is required to go to a long, unproductive marketing staff meeting every week.  Everyone hates it and everyone knows it’s a colossal waste of time.  As the meeting rolls around, Relative #1 feels stressed out and angry because he knows he could use that time for much more important things.  He’s tried to explain this to his boss who replies by saying Relative #1 is not a team player, and reiterating that the meeting is mandatory and he needs to be there.  So much for productive uses of time.

Relative #2 has been speaking up about his unhappiness with his work environment for a long time and was recently asked by his boss’ boss to give a presentation to their team about what he thought their environment should be like.  His day came last week.  He gave a presentation on their current environment and what he thinks the answer is to their problems…you guessed it: ROWE.  It was met with agreement from his peers, who desperately want to see change.  From upper management, he received silence, “this is too good to be true”, and from HR - “this could never work here.”  The team is buzzing about ROWE and the conversation won’t stop anytime soon.  Relative #2 plans to keep the ROWE fire stoked…he’s not sure what will happen.  Time will tell.

We know this is an uphill battle…we experienced it firsthand and now we’re experiencing it with our loved ones.  It’s almost doubly hard with our loved ones because now ROWE is proven and we know what it would do to their business results and for their lives.  As much as it hurts to watch them go through the pain and struggle of trying to bring the ROWE mindset into their environments, we know it’s all part of the journey.

So for our relatives, and all of you, we say it again: You are pioneers in trying to get others to understand the promise of ROWE.  William James, a philosopher and psychologist who lived in the 1800s, said “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”  Two hundred years later, the revolution is getting a kick in the butt…

In 1964, a New York City woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death near her home in Queens. Exaggerated newspaper reports said that 38 people had witnessed the attack and no one called the police. Further investigation into the murder refuted that story, but not before the public imagination had seized on the idea of how big social groups can drastically fail to provide even the most basic protection for individuals. The Genovese case prompted psychologists to study the so-called Bystander Effect, the phenomenon by which individuals fail to help one another because they believe someone else will take responsibility.

We’re not going to equate what happens in corporate America with murder. At the same time, when we read the stories you send us through the “Tell us why work sucks” link on this page, we see a lot of people suffering as workplace bystanders look on.

We see a lot of people who are stressed out, who feel out of control, who are struggling with the demands of work and life - and are getting no help from their companies.  Even worse, they are getting no help from their fellow coworkers, who take a “whaddya gonna do?” attitude about unfairness in the workplace.

In other words, we commiserate with each other, but we don’t stick up for each other. Consider this scene: a coworker comes in “late.” The boss dresses her down. When the boss leaves, you offer your sympathy. But why didn’t you stick up for her while the boss was there? Why didn’t you say, “Emily does great work.  Why don’t we focus on that vs. the time she gets to the office?”

In a traditional work environment, sticking up for someone like this is inconceivable. But not in a Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, there is no Bystander Effect because the organization is aligned to deliver results, not serve the company hierarchy, the soul-hardening politics, or the attendance policy in the employee handbook.

You don’t have bystanders when everyone benefits from having control over their time.

You don’t have bystanders when taking an active role in your work earns you more freedom (as opposed to more work).

You don’t have bystanders when helping other people is a way of helping yourself.

You don’t have bystanders when the boss is there to facilitate the work getting done, as opposed to enforcing the rules like a hall monitor.

What’s great about ROWE is that turning people from bystanders to upstanding workers happens as part of the migration.  We’ve found that people are, in fact, relieved to be able to focus on results rather than on office politics. The big change has to come from the organization as a whole. It means everyone from the CEO on down to the person working the front desk has to realign their thinking and their behavior. Once that happens the bystanders go away, and both people and the organization get to start living up to their potential.

We were very pleased to receive this post from an Italian blogger about Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. We were even more pleased when we ran it through Google Translate and found that even a computer-butchered version of the post still communicated the essence of ROWE.

Admittedly, the Guidepost about the elimination of concepts such as “late” and “early” doesn’t quite come through with the statement “get to 14 is not to be late and leave at the same time is not the first time.”

But “every day may be Saturday” is pretty close to “Every day feels like Saturday”, and “Every meeting is optional” survives the translator almost completely intact.

We were also encouraged to see the comments. Even with Europe’s different work culture, people have the same human concerns about a Results-Only Work Environment. They also have the same human hopes about ROWE.

Is it a dangerous idea? Or an appealing idea?

Yes!

Finally, we have found a new catchphrase in the post’s closing:

Wow would be an epochal change in culture, a dream, not try to make something every day, a small pebble for change, smile can do it.

To all you ROWE warriors out there, say it with us:

Smile can do it!

You rarely hear this question in a traditional work environment.  It’s assumed that everyone is hard at work doing…well, something.  If you show up at 8:00 and stay until 5:00, you’ve met expectations, right?

When all of a sudden you stop tracking time, stop putting in time, and stop talking about time, all that’s left is the work you’re actually getting paid to do.  When you stop using time as a measure of performance, everyone starts scrambling because the majority of people don’t know what “the work” is supposed to be.

We’re living in a world where it’s okay to meander through the work day, literally unclear about what you’re actually being measured on, and what you’re supposed to be delivering.  A world where employees set their goals the week before performance appraisal time (don’t deny it - we bet at least half of you out there have done this).  We’re in work environments where HR sends out e-mail after e-mail reminding us to complete our goal-setting activities and we move that activity to the bottom of our list.  The urgency to set measurable goals in a traditional work environment rarely exists because using time as a measure of loyalty, dedication and good work, in most cases, wins out over evaluation of the actual work.

Or, if we want to tell it like it is, we feel like this about goals.

Here’s the fact of the matter: Until we own our own time and have complete control over how we spend it, goal-setting will be just another useless activity that fills our time in the work environment.  And, a workforce with clear, measurable goals for each and every person will never happen.  Ever.

This is a real-life example:

Pre-ROWE

Manager: “We’ve been working on this strategy for awhile, and I really want you to crack the nut this year.”

Employee: “Got it.  I’ll do my best.”  ["I have no idea what you're asking for, but if I show up every day, stay late, and come to you next year with something that I think you might like, I should be okay."]

Post-ROWE

Manager: “We’ve been working on this strategy for awhile, and I really want you to crack the nut this year.”

Employee: “Let’s define ‘the nut’.  How will we know if I’ve cracked it?  How will it be measured?  What’s ‘meets expectations’ and ‘exceeds expectations’ on cracking the nut?”  ["If I can get clear on how to exceed expectations on cracking this nut, I can figure out the activities that will get me there and also plan how I'll volunteer at my child's school, coach her basketball team, and take a vacation to Miami."]

Our bet is that most of you have great goal-setting tools at your companies, but people aren’t actually using them.  Or, you use them, and then file the completed activity away - and 3 months later, you scratch you head and say “Where did I put that completed goal-setting guide?”

Goal-setting is not an activity.  Goal-setting is not an action on a quarterly checklist.  Getting clear on what you’re getting paid to do, and how to measure it is, and should be, status quo.  It should be the way business is done.  We can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard “If I let my people control their own time, how will I know if they’re working and what they’re supposed to be doing?” to which we exclaim “How do you know NOW?”

If you knew your team was going to migrate to ROWE within the next 3 months, would you feel clear enough about your goals and expectations to be comfortable?  If you’re a manager, would you be comfortable that each and every one of your employees knows exactly what their expectations are and that each expectation is measurable?