Give Me a Reason

Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin are conspiring to change office life around the world. Well, maybe not, but they both wrote posts this week examining new ideas about what matters in the workplace and what shouldn’t. Seth took the first shot, on Monday, when he wrote about the new standard for meetings and conferences. I can’t put it any more eloquently than this:

If you’re a knowledge worker, your boss shouldn’t make you come to the (expensive) office every day unless there’s something there that makes it worth your trip… It’s hard for me to see why you’d bother having someone come all the way to an office just to sit in a cube and type.

On Thursday, Tim Ferriss started a series of interviews with the geniuses behind Best Buy’s Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) initiative. If you’re not familiar with ROWE, get the scoop straight from the creators or read this Business Week article. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who created the program, told Tim that ROWE is not only transforming business results at Best Buy, but also the personal lives of their employees:

Six months after teams go live, they are asked how much more productive they perceive they are on a scale of 0-100%. Then managers are asked how much more productive the team is according to actual business results. If perception and reality match, that’s a winner. Under this model, ROWE teams show an average increase in productivity of 41%. It makes sense.

On the personal side, ROWE has transformed people’s lives. We’ve heard stories about ROWE saving marriages, allowing people to be better parents (and opened the door for some to actually be parents), get in shape and give back to their community.

In part two of the interview, they encourage readers to start thinking about what it would be like to truly control their own time:

At 4:00 p.m. on a sunny Friday, your boss lets you leave early. Goody, right? Wrong. This is a school kid’s view of time, not an adult’s. If you’re getting your work done, then why should someone have the right to tell you where to be?

Indeed. I count myself as a knowledge worker. I don’t believe that I was hired because I could fill a cubicle for 40 hours a week, but rather because I have a certain base of knowledge and can provide insight and new ideas, think critically and help accomplish business goals. ROWE should be perfect for people like me. However, I can’t imagine ideas like that capturing the minds of mainstream corporate management.

What do you think? Can you imagine ROWE ever working in your company?