ROWE (Results-only Work Environment) is an idea by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson which they developed to great success at Best Buy. I’m very excited about their new book which is due out next month, and the nuggets within about how they transformed a typical 9-to-5 office environment into a work-life-balance miracle. The reason I’m so excited is that they have apparently delivered on an idea I’ve been throwing around for a couple of years – basically that if you focus on the work people are doing rather than the hours they are putting in, you’ll get a more productive and motivated work force. Not to mention that you’ll weed out the duds who don’t do much but are very good at playing the system. In principal it sounds easy and obvious – give people flexibility and tools to work wherever and however suits them best – set up management systems that focus on the quality and timeliness of work done – run a programme to educate everyone on the new scheme. The benefits are clear for anyone that has kids, a social calendar or anything else going on outside of work. The difficulties that I can see are about cultural shifts. If person A likes to work weekends but person B resolutely doesn’t, how are their work times going to mesh? When you have whole teams of people working that way, the logistics of any work process must get tricky. Also how to stop people from slipping back into old habits. I’ve found my teams (and pretty much everyone) to be inclined to slip into old habits and do the easy/familiar thing regardless of whether it’s right… These can be tough challenges. Well a mont or so from now we’ll see what solutions Cali and Jody have.
Filed under: general , cali and jody, ROWE, work-life-balance
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