We’ve been watching (with great interest) as Michael and Aaron discuss of our recent post How Do You Do 80% of a Job? We love seeing this passion.

They are having what we sometimes call “The Conversation.” The Conversation often has nothing to do with the topic. The Conversation is all about processing the implications of ROWE. (It doesn’t even have to be adversarial. Sometimes The Conversation happens between two people who are both really into ROWE).

We’ve been dealing with this phenomenon from the beginning and still deal with it today. Someone asks us, “So what are you working on?” We take a deep breath and tell them about ROWE, knowing full well that we’re going to be talking about it for at least another twenty minutes. In the five years we’ve been working on this project, not once (not once!) has someone heard the line “People can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done” and wanted to change the subject.

Are you interested in having a little fun with someone? Introduce the ROWE definition to someone who’s never heard it before. It doesn’t matter if you support ROWE or are skeptical. You can be completely neutral. Just float that definition out there and see what the reaction is.

If the person you’re talking with asks for more information, play it cool. Say, “I don’t know much more about it. There’s this new way of working where people get to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. What do you think?”

Then sit back and watch the gears start turning. Chances are you’ll have The Conversation. See how long it lasts and then tell us how it goes.

We were about to reply to Terese Blanck’s comment to Telecommuting, Jealously and You, but then we thought our answer was worth its own post.

Terese wants to know:

“Does [ROWE] work for all types of personalities? Does the employee who is young and needs more direction still show results? Are there main personal traits that must be present in order for this to work such as self-directed, engaged and passionate about your work? Also, how does a receptionist feel who must be present at work…do you make some type of arrangement for this role as well?”

This questions points to what we feel is one of the most insidious aspects of the traditional workplace: the idea that control over your job is only for the select few. The traditional workplace teaches us that only some people (upper-level employees, employees with more seniority, employees who show the most can-do spirit) get the privilege to run their own lives. Everyone else needs to be put on a schedule, crammed in a cube, and watched over.

But you do not have to be special to be in a Results-Only Work Environment. You don’t have to be more focused or savvy or passionate or anything. It’s for everyone.

The reason is that a ROWE is not that different. You’re still going to work and doing your job. You still have meetings and solve problems and communicate with customers. None of that changes.

What changes is that if you want to go pick up some dry cleaning at 2 pm, you just go do it and don’t worry about it. You don’t have to announce it to your team or get permission, because you’re getting your work done and that’s all that matters. (The same goes for the receptionist. Someone covers for the receptionist now, when he or she is sick, or at lunch, or in a meeting. So it’s no different.)

In fact, as you continue to think about and explore the idea of a ROWE, we’d encourage you to think about how ordinary a Results-Only Work Environment is. It’s really just like the rest of your life. You know, those hours away from work when you actually get to be an adult.

We have some new free downloads on the CultureRx website and we’re very excited to have them circulating around. We invite you to download the ROWE quiz and the ROWE one-pager and share them with friends and coworkers. If you have any questions or comments, please post them here and we’ll get a conversation going.

Intel says they hope to change. This Wall Street Journal story talks about how the chipmaker is possibly considering maybe being open to changing their cube culture.

Here is our favorite bit:

“In one of its tests, Intel plans to add 32 small conference rooms to a floor for meetings of two to four people and a dozen ‘private audio rooms’ – for private conversations that aren’t possible in cubicles.”

We love you, Intel! You come up with the craziest schemes for allowing people to think and talk to each other.

Not much to say about this piece about SimulScribe CEO James Siminoff other than READ IT NOW. As we’ve said before, focusing on results works. And it’s not, as one of the sources in the story says, “extreme entrepreneurship”, at all. There is nothing “extreme” about not wasting people’s time, effort and energy.

We’re going to go out on a limb and say something controversial: We want people to live.

We want the workforce to be filled with alive, mostly healthy people. And yet, according to this story on sleep and health, a third of the population of the U.K., and over 40 percent in the U.S., regularly sleep less than five hours a night, and that lack of sleep can be deadly. Get that little sleep and your risk of “cardiovascular death” doubles.

Studies like this make us wonder: How much worse does life have to get before people push back? How much freedom and control can our jobs take from us before we say “Enough”? It’s not as if employers aren’t getting anything out of the employer-employee bargain. You are doing your job, not collecting charity benefits. And yet people are giving up sleep in order to work longer hours in the hopes their “dedication” will be rewarded.

In a ROWE, your work performance is not judged based on time. If you need sleep, then you can get sleep. There is no need to be up at 6:30 a.m. just because you have to be at work at 8:00 a.m. You can take a nap in the middle of the day. As a result, you work when you’re rested and ready to contribute, and you rest when you need to rest. As long as you get your job done, you are not a slave to the clock.

Make sense?

Big corporations have a hard time letting go. Check out this pilot program from Intel. The intention is to give people the “quiet time” they need to be thoughtful and creative:

“The pilot group – 300 engineers and managers, located in two US sites – will adopt a ‘Quiet Time’ agreement. Every Tuesday morning they will all set their email and IM clients to ‘offline’, forward their phones to voice mail, decline all meetings, and isolate themselves from ‘visitors’ by putting up a ‘Do not disturb’ sign at their doorway. Thus, for half a day each week they will have the ability to focus on the ‘thinking work’ that researchers have shown is critical to creativity, innovation, and to faster, better production of output.”

Okay, so let’s see if we’ve got this straight:

Quiet time agreement entered (check).
Email set to “offline” (check).
Meetings set to “decline” (check).
Doorway set to “do not disturb” (check).
Engage Tuesday morning thinking work… now!

But, of course, like any top-down, non-organic effort to manage change, what the company gives with one hand it takes away with the other:

“Of course, all this is tricky stuff. These people are doing a critical job as a team, and messing with their communications culture is not something we do lightly. There will certainly be permitted exceptions, and the pilot is being monitored closely to find out what they are and how to optimize the methodology for best effect.”

So, in other words, Intel is all for this quiet, half-of-Tuesday thinking stuff, but we also need “permitted exceptions”. And it will all be “monitored closely” lest things get out of hand. So go head employees! Rock it out! And, maybe—if you’re really, really good—after quiet time, you’ll get a graham cracker and a half pint of milk.

In a Results-Only Work Environment, you don’t have to deal with this kind of well-meaning nonsense. You are not treated like a child. Employees have complete control over when they work, and as a result they have the power to decide how to best use their time. At Best Buy, this has led to an unprecedented level of engagement and commitment. It’s also common sense. If you have to monitor and control how a knowledge worker thinks, then why did you hire him or her in the first place?