ROWE is ideal for someone like myself who hates long commutes, has owned my own design consultancy and finds it difficult to do my best work in a brightly-lit, potentially noisy, open-office environment. Knowing how to self-manage is integral to my work and I often finish projects with time to spare…leaving me to twiddle my thumbs for extended periods of time, glued to a desk while I wait for feedback.

ROWE is the polar opposite of my last company which required us to be 90% billable and account for all our time in 15 minute increments (they would also pull our parking card records to see if we were ever more than 15 minutes late in the morning or after lunch). There were folks there for 20+ years, so clearly some flourished in that sort of atmosphere. I only lasted 2 excruciating years.

As for fraud, I have met plenty of folks wearing the “Emperor’s New Clothes” over the years in office environments. People who use smoke and mirrors to disguise their inability to actually do anything, take credit for other colleagues work, plagarize, hire a subcontractor and sell it as their own or repackage old work and say it’s new. ROWE might actually make it easier to pinpoint who these people are. Or not. I do know not having to be around them in the office would surely keep my blood pressure from spiking.

I realize that people who don’t have enough self-motivation may find ROWE difficult. There are people who will always enjoy the satisfaction of working long hours in an office or just can’t get work done at home. I can wholeheartedly say, I am not one of those people and am thankful I landed where I did. I feel like it’s a freelance lifestyle with direct deposit and medical benefits. Paid for the quality and output, without someone over my shoulder all day!

Pffft

Need to see someone? get them into a meeting! Need to talk to your boss? Get him/her into the office. Wondering not only when the end product is going to be ready, but where your employee will be when they finish it? Ask for a list of tour dates and print it on a t-shirt. Or how about a periodic list of deliverables like any good product should have.

Technology increases collaboration like never before, but no one is an island. Programs like ROWE, like any other program, require management. Not all your team will thrive in it, and that has to be accounted for. Find what works best for everyone and make it a cultural tocuhstone, not a carbon-copy of what you read in a book.

I know i’m late to the party, but came across this thread and wanted to chime in regarding your concern about ethics. My thoughts are that unethical behavior has a higher chance of increasing (ROWE or not) based on the types of metrics a company is taking. All too often, organizations get caught up in “one-size-fits all” models of performance management, which lead to things like numbers games and quotas. It is within those systems that I’d be willing to bet most of the unethical behaviors arise. People find a way to game the system. Competition in these environments breeds win at all cost mentalities. I can find it, but don’t have it at my fingertips, but there is recent data suggesting it is better to not pay sales people commissions. It actually demotivates them to perform. Read Dan Pink’s book “Drive” and it goes into the past 60 years of scientific research that proves this point as well. Knowledge workers actually perform worse when motivated extrinsically. It creates a culture of “box checkers.”

Managers would be wise to work one-on-one with employees to develop clear expected outcomes and performance requirements PRIOR to the performance review. Is it harder to judge performance in this way? Yes and no? No, because you’ve already discussed at length with an employee what is expected and what is pass and what is fail and the employee has contributed to that discussion. Yes, because there might be more subjectivity involved. Its harder when you’re not being judged on total dollars sold, units moved, etc. But what do those metrics really mean? At the end of the day, managers must be able to decide if an employee is adding or subtracting value to an organziation and be held accountable for the decision to keep or release them.

I realized from your post that you like ROWE and were just trying to highlight some of the negatives. I actually came over from a link from a friend (who I think found you on Google), so I hadn’t gone through your other posts, but I surely will this week.

I’d love to see true productivity measures as well, and it is very dicey of Best Buy to not be fully transparent and it undermines credibility. Who knows if we will ever get it..

As I do not work in a ROWE company, I’ve been here a little too long and should head out. Nearly 9:30pm on a Friday night…

PS. I’m big fan of your blog theme.

I want to reiterate that I actually really like the idea of ROWE. I loathe control-based management. I think ROWE is the ultimate in commitment-based management. That said, people tend to act like, “OMG this is awesome!” or “OMG this is awful!” without much in between. I’ve spent a bit of time on my site talking about why it rocks – I wanted to look at some of the reasons why it sucks to provide a bit more balance.

From the “ethical concerns” perspective, unethical behavior is relative to your job and what your goal measures are. If you worked for a translation organization and the measure of your productivity was number of translations completed and accuracy of translations, unethical behavior might include just running documents through translation software, outsourcing to someone in a cheaper labor market, etc. Basically, cheating.

Yea, cheating is “against the rules” in a ROWE, but the data shows that people are more likely to do so when they’re only measured on outcomes. I’m not saying you would cheat. In fact, I think most people would not. But there are some people who wouldn’t in a traditional work environment and would in a ROWE. Cali and Jody made it very clear to me that in a ROWE you don’t measure competencies, JUST outcomes. That’s pretty cut and dry to me.

I also didn’t say face-to-face interactions are ALWAYS better. I’m saying its a better way to build a sense of team/organizational culture. Organization’s who manage remote teams struggle with the culture thing all the time. Companies that have multiple branches find that the cultures between them are often drastically unique, regardless of how often they telecommunicate. There are many tasks for which I prefer a quick email or phone call to a sit-down meeting. But if I’m trying to build relationships with people and feel a sense of identity around a group, I don’t think there’s a great replacement for physical, face-to-face interaction.

You said: Does anyone have information outside of Best Buy? I thought that other companies have been doing this as well, such as AT&T and Sun Microsystems.

I know the State of… Oregon, maybe? Ohio? I forget!… is trying to convert businesses to ROWE to ease traffic strains on their highways. I also know the Girl Scouts in one state are moving towards a ROWE as well, and blog about it. Beyond that, I have not seen any info on it. And while Best Buy seems to be enjoying it, there is a definite lack of transparency in their results with it. They’ve shown data about just a handful of teams, cherry-picking the best numbers to highlight.

I’d love to see retention/turnover data for the whole organization. I’d love to see true productivity measures, and not just “I think I’m putting out more work, so I must be.” Best Buy/Cali and Jody can’t – or won’t – provide them.

I also don’t think agree that I’m being to assuming in my voluntary turnover statement. I know you’ll always have turnover. I think it’s odd, though, that an organization can report those numbers but not tell you why people are leaving. If this system is literally the most amazing thing since sliced bread, and the only employees who won’t like it are those who can’t manage themselves (the not-so-subtle undertone in Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It) then why are people opting out. Literally, why are they leaving? Where they good performers or not so good performers?

Your comment about an in-your-face manager – that to me is poor managerial performance. But is that an outcome that gets measured? Probably not – it seems to be more competency related. I couldn’t really get a clear answer on that from Cali and Jody, either.

This isn’t nit-picking. Understanding this kind of data is critical to making educated, strategic decisions about organizational performance management. You said: but there is too little data to conclude anything right now. Exactly! Why would I want to make a massive investment in my organization without proper data on what might happen?

Just so you don’t think I’m anti-ROWE, check out (they’re links):
- Smashing the Clock: Best Buy’s ROWE
- Care about Earth Day? Tell your employees to stay home.
- Work is something you do (duh!)
- Valentine’s Day and ROWE
- Podcast: Ashley Acker on ROWE