There’s nothing even remotely official yet, but we thought you’d like to know that we’re talking to a number of producers about bringing the drama of the Results-Only Work Environment to TV viewers everywhere.

Did we say drama?

Yes, we did.

Life gets easier once a team has migrated from a traditional work environment to a Results-Only Work Environment. When you eradicate Sludge and start focusing on results, people have an easier time at work. The tasks can still be challenging, but the work culture helps you solve problems instead of compounding them with nonsense.

That said, getting from a traditional work environment to a ROWE would make for some great TV. Here’s why:

1. People will fight to the death defending their beliefs, even if those beliefs don’t serve their best interests

We see this a lot. Leaders, managers, and rank-and-file employees get all red and hot resisting ROWE. We can’t let our people just do whatever they want! It’ll be anarchy!

2. People get incredibly emotional

It’s not unusual for people to tear up or break down in a migration session. Managers realize they’ve been treating their employees like dirt. Employees realize they’ve been wasting their lives stuck in a cube, and for what?

3. People undergo intense personal transformations

That hardcore, drill-sergeant manager turns into the most supportive work partner you’ve ever seen. The meek employee stands up to her boss when he gives her unnecessary work. The kind of boring coworker . . . well, he’s still kind of boring, but he’s got hobbies now and he’s getting more interesting!

4. Work gets done like never before

Okay, this last one wouldn’t make for good TV, but it does make for good business.

Stay tuned . . . .

A friend of ours recently told us a story that made our jaws drop. He was visiting one of his vendors and happened to have a copy of the book with him. When he showed it to the people there, they were very excited about the prospect of a ROWE. It seems that they have a very strict punctuality policy—if you don’t punch in on time, you get docked 10% of your pay.

When employees complained about fairness, management put an ingenious (and cruel) spin on it. They told people to think of the policy as a “punctuality bonus”. If you punched in on time, you’d get your 10% bump, even if it really just brought you up to your normal salary.

*Sigh*

We hear stories like these and it makes us wonder what would happen if the leadership at that company were exposed to the ROWE mindset. Work cultures are slow to change, and we doubt this place will become a good place to work without a lot of struggle, but maybe, just maybe we could make work suck just a little less at this company.

You probably have your own horror stories, about a company policy, a manager’s outdated notions about time, or coworkers who Sludge like crazy. You can probably also see how a Results-Only Work Environment would change the culture of your work.

So we want to hear from you. Post a comment (five lines maximum) about why you want or need ROWE. We’ll award a copy of the book to the best entry. If you’d like, we’ll also send a copy to your boss, manager or member of the executive team. We can’t promise to score that “punctuality bonus” for you, but maybe we can help plant the seed that will make those kinds of policies go away.

We were pleased to see this post at Episcopal Cafe for two reasons. First, we love hearing other people’s Sludge examples. Lying about being in a meeting because you want to finish your chicken avocado salad is a new one for us, even if the reason behind the lie makes sense. This anecdote is an example of Sludge Anticipation, which is any time you have a socially acceptable excuse ready to cover your ass for when you’re doing something that is socially unacceptable at work. (Like enjoying food when you “should” be working.)

The second reason we were happy to see this post is because ROWE started at a corporation, but the basic principles behind it (that people are adults who should be trusted to do their work and then left alone to live their lives) could apply to other areas of our life. In our conversations with employees at Best Buy, we often heard stories about how the ROWE mindset had started to influence the other aspects of people’s lives.

We know it’s early to be talking about the second wave of ROWE, but then again, why not? And so we’d like to put a question to you:

If you lived in a Results-Only world, how might your life be different? What would your day be like if you had a Results-Only marriage, family, neighborhood association, school board, etc.?

Maybe you are here because you saw our 10 ways to increase productivity using a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) mindset on Tech Republic.

Or maybe you are here because you saw our What It’s Really Like in a Results-Only Work Environment post on Brazen Careerist.

But it’s highly unlikely that you are here because you saw both posts.

And so we’d like to do a little internet matchmaking. Tech Republic readers: meet Brazen Careerist readers. Brazen Careerist readers: meet Tech Republic readers.

We think you’ll really like each other. The reason is that whether you’re an IT person trying to get the most of your day, or a young person looking for help in striking out in a new career, both of you have something in common. You both have to deal with the tired, broken, outdated culture of the traditional workplace.

What makes ROWE so exciting is that it makes work better for everyone. It’s not an idea that discriminates based on age or job title or education level. Everyone has a role to play. Everyone can contribute. And if people are contributing, then they should be free to live their lives. It’s a simple idea that works.

We said we [hearted] them before. And we still do. We especially [heart] this post: Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor.

As they note:

“Software development is rarely a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s multiple marathons, actually. So trying to extract 110% performance from today when it means having only 70% performance available tomorrow is a bad deal. You end up with just 77% of your available peak. What a bad trade.”

You could substitute “business” for “software development” and that statement still holds true. It’s just common sense. Enough sleep = better performance. Ask any tired, overworked individual at any company and they’ll tell you if they got a little more sleep, they would be a lot more effective.

So why doesn’t common sense prevail? The problem is that one person’s common sense doesn’t stand a chance against the culture of a workplace. When managers reward employees for showing “dedication” by coming in early and working late, then the company will make those bad trades that the 37Signals blog talks about. As long as your work culture honors people putting in hours rather than people driving results, then sleep deprivation will always be a badge of honor.
We are reminded of a line from Men in Black (quote is courtesy the Internet Movie Database) when Will Smith’s character asks Tommy Lee Jones’ character why the truth about aliens living among us must be kept from the general public.

Will Smith: “Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.”
Tommy Lee Jones: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”

We’d like to offer a big thanks to Matt Metzgar for setting up this public ROWE forum. We couldn’t be happier. Ever since the beginning of ROWE, we have talked about how great it would be if people took this idea and ran with it. Of course we joined, and of course we’ll be following along, but this isn’t our baby. We started this conversation about how to fix the problem of work, but the ultimate outcome belongs to everyone.

We hope this forum starts to answer the question that people ask us all the time, “What can I do to get in a ROWE?” One of the things you can do is participate in the larger conversation about ROWE and work. This happened at Best Buy in the early days of ROWE. Even when not many teams were ROWE, people were talking and those conversations helped change the culture.

For example, in the early days, if someone found out you were ROWE, they might say, “You’re doing that ROWE thing, aren’t you? How do you like working from home?” The misconception created an opportunity. The person in a ROWE would say, “It’s not really about working from home. I still come in, but I don’t have to come in unless it drives results.”

The non-ROWE employee might not believe them, or they might think there was a catch. But at least the idea was out there. When the non-ROWE employee kept hearing messages like these, her mind started to open up. Later, when it was time for her to transition into a ROWE, she was already a little farther along than if people had remained silent.

That’s how social change works. It’s slower than other kinds of change because you have to change how people think. But it’s possible. Just ask the people at Best Buy and J.A. Counter. They’re living the end result of all that talk.

A quick post today to answer a question that we get a lot (and one that has recently bubbled up through the comments on this blog):

This Results-Only Work Environment thing sounds great. So where do I go to work in one?

Right now, there are two authentic ROWEs: Best Buy, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small investment firm located in Wisconsin. We are currently working with other companies (whose names we can’t disclose yet) on migrating them from a traditional work environment to a ROWE. We are also developing a kit that will let teams, departments and organizations make this transformation themselves. (Not a commercial . . . just sayin’.)

But we can’t do it alone. And it’s not going to happen overnight. Right now ROWE is an idea. Before ROWE get on the menu of choices for job seekers, it’s going to have to become a movement.

We realize this is a tall order. But there are small, daily steps that people can take to make ROWE a reality. First and foremost: talk to people. You don’t need to be preachy. It’s more a matter of asking the right questions. Why are we so obsessed with time? Why do we spend our lives in wasteful meetings? Why don’t we focus more on results?

Trite but true: the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that there is one. If we can get enough people to be actively fed up with the status quo, then we have a fighting chance of changing it.