We were pleased to see this post from Mojo Mom about SWAT (”smart women with available time”) teams. The context is Sue Shellenbarger’s story in the Wall Street Journal about an experimental project (running business simulations) at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler business school. As Mojo Mom notes, these simulations only happen occasionally, “so Kenan-Flagler needed executive-level talent that could assemble at a moment’s notice to work on an intense but brief project.”

Mojo Mom was one of the project’s participants. Not only did she rock it, but she knows she rocked it:

“When you think of ’stay-at-home Mom’ versus ‘MBA student,’ a stereotypical image might be minnows swimming with sharks. It was good to confront that image because when it came right down to it, I actually felt more like the shark. Because the MBA students are very smart, we might forget that most of them have not been in the working world for more than a few years. Compared to a twentysomething, I have come to appreciate the life experience I have accumulated through every work and family challenge I have faced.”

We would love to see more statements like this be part of our national conversation about work and life. Having a kid and being a parent is not a business liability.  It’s bad enough that we stigmatize women for not being “available” after they have kids. But we also sell them short for not being as capable. The irony is that having children, like any major life experience, presents challenges that can make you stronger and smarter and better. If we dropped the labels and focused on what people could accomplish, we’d have SWAT (and SMAT) teams all over the place.

According to a recent CareerBuilder.com survey, one out of four workers admit to making up fake excuses for being late to work. Here are the top ten “most unusual” excuses given:

1.   While rowing across the river to work, I got lost in the fog.
2.   Someone stole all my daffodils.
3.   I had to go audition for American Idol.
4.   My ex-husband stole my car so I couldn’t drive to work.
5.   My route to work was shut down by a Presidential motorcade.
6.   I wasn’t thinking and accidentally went to my old job.
7.   I was indicted for securities fraud this morning.
8.   The line was too long at Starbucks.
9.   I was trying to get my gun back from the police.
10.  I didn’t have money for gas because all of the pawn shops were
closed.

We appreciate someone trying to get a laugh, but in when you use the ROWE mindset, none of these excuses are funny. Because there is no such thing as a good excuse, a bad excuse or an unusual excuse in a ROWE. The only thing that matters is whether or not the work is getting done.

In our world, we talk about socially acceptable excuses and socially unacceptable excuses. Socially acceptable excuses are the kinds that the article lists as the most common: traffic, getting the kids ready, etc. Socially unacceptable excuses would be something like “drank too much last night and needed to sleep it off” or “the thought of coming in and doing this soul-stealing job had me nailed to the mattress as I hit the snooze bar repeatedly until the fear of getting fired motivated me to get out of bed.”

In all those cases the person might come in a half hour or an hour late. In all of those cases, the person might have gone on to have a very productive day. The person may have even missed a meeting, but was still able to recover that lost experience and contribute to the bottom line. In the end, the nature of the excuse doesn’t really matter. As the article says, a little over a quarter of the managers surveyed are skeptical about whether they’re even true. If one in four employees lies about coming in late, one in four managers don’t believe the lies.

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine taking excuses entirely out of the workplace. Employees don’t give them. Managers don’t ask for them. What happens? Do people start coming in later and later and later? Or do they come in more or less at the same time? Are people more productive or less productive? Or the same?

Finally, we did find a ray of hope in this article, which notes that “43 percent of hiring managers say they don’t mind if their employees are late as long as their work is completed on time with good quality.” We think this is great news for all of us who are passionate about the ROWE revolution. That means that almost half of the population generally believes that results are more important than time. Maybe with a little work we could get that number north of fifty. We think that would be a change for the better.

First, a big thanks to the growing number of readers who are coming to this site and spending more and more time here. We’re happy to have you. We see this topic as a dialog and your questions, comments and even outright objections are not only welcomed but desired.

With that in mind, we’d like to respond to one of the comments to last Friday’s post about workplace rudeness. Tim! asks, “If we have a team meeting and I ask everyone to be in the office by noon and one guy shows up at 12:30 thus wasting everyone’s time, isn’t that also rude?”

We have to admit we are a bit conflicted as to how to answer. We don’t like jerks anymore than the next person, but part of the definition of rudeness has to do with violating social norms.  And, in the case of workplace and time, we feel the norms are the problem, less so people’s individual behavior.

Is a person who keeps their coworkers waiting rude? Yes. At the same time, we feel that when managers create a culture of fear around time, they are selling their people, their business and themselves short. Chewing someone out for being late might make them less likely to be late the next time, but it isn’t going to motivate them to perform better. You’re also sending a message to the rest of the team that time is more important than results.

Furthermore, by making it personal you’re missing out on an opportunity to talk about outcomes. In a ROWE, when  managers are having problems with an employee’s performance, they focus on the work, not on the employee’s use of time, their personal work style, or their “lack of dedication”.

So to all you managers out there: the next time you’re having problems with a late employee, take a deep breath, remind yourself that it’s not personal - it’s business - and talk to that employee about the outcomes they need to drive. Focus on time and you’ll get punctuality. Focus on results and you’ll get performance.