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1
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
This is a very good report. The thing that really does bug me is micro-management that managers tend to adopt. All thet seem to care about is what time you get in, what time you leaving, how often you are off from work and thats about it. Wish my managers could adopt this policy.
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2
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
Good one. Its another way to say use "common
sense". I work in India and manage project
deliverables. Though I am not claiming most or
any of them are followed, witnessing its
reflection in small measures such as euphoric
belonging, performance, peer activity, manager-
employee relationships and productivity does
show signs of achievement. I had in my recent
past witnessed a high flying location head in
my past organization being fired because his
"ideologies" never mattered to us. Its basic
and human that possessing this virtue an
invaluable one..
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3
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
I am running a very little company with my friends as being my employee in Pakistan. We are developing a software for a US based company! I am really happy that even though I had not read it anywhere, I was implementing the same rules in here. Its been 9 months that we are still together 
My friends were doing Master Degree in parallel and it was really hard for me to take this decision specially when everyone was telling me that this will be a mistake to work with my friends. BUt inside I felt that it will be a good idea.
I think I havnt really tried to act as a boss and in return I have got peace. I think the last point in this report is the key! which I have implemented. It really gives me alot of confidence when I read such reports because somehow I do it naturally which experts recommend. It has happened to me before as well
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4
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
I think that these things would really work if there are as many ethical people in a company as we wish to believe there are. Micro-management does have many fall backs, but unless you want to continue paying that employee that just sits in her cubicle and stares at a black screen all day (yes, my company has one of those), you should really walk around and make sure everyone is "doing ok" and that they don't need any assistance with anything. I supervise 5 employees in a very small company in Virginia and my employees ASK me to show my face more often. Also, when I do walk around, they are always full of questions on certain things and need my assistance. By walking around to their desks, I've just prevented them from having to stop working to come ask me those questions. The walking around isn't the only thing our company does that this list says not to, but it is all with good reason. We can't allow everyone to decide when they'll be here and when they won't...we'll lose customers since some days we wouldn't have enough people here to help them!
Overall, I think that these ideas are great for certain companies, and not so great for others, something that should definately be pointed out!
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5
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
It's a struggle balancing time with results. For a while I was very flexible with my team by simply focusing on the results but then it got to the point where they started to take advantage of the flexibility. As the results began to drop I had to make a decision on how to increase productivity. The easy first step was to ensure that they are getting in on time.
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6
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
Wow! Treating people like mature adults instead of children is such a great concept! Work might actually be fun...
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7
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
As long as clear deadlines are set and met,
and people know what results they are to
produce, then it would work for most company
roles. If there was an accurate way to measure
results, then I say go for it!
How would you handle someone in a customer
service role where they have to be available to
answer incoming calls? They can't roll into the
office at 11am if the phone has been ringing
since 9am!
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8
09/30/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
In response to the people who point out that ROWE can lead to people who under-perform - that's one of the main points in the book and Best Buy case study. This approach enables you to surface and eliminate under-performers, who really don't contribute to results whether they're sitting in their chairs all day or not. In the case of Best Buy, their procurement team was able to eliminate 10 under-performers while still increasing productivity by an enormous amount(50% I believe). I agree that this might not work for all environments, especially those which are externally dependent, but this is definitely a new paradigm and one that I think will work well with the Gen Y workforce--which will be the largest workforce since the Baby Boomers. Another interesting employment approach is Zappos, which is a customer service-oriented company who is applying some of these new approaches and experiencing phenomenal results. If we want to increase productivity and create a high-performing work culture, we all need to start thinking about how to engage employees and reward those who deliver results, not those who sit in their chairs all day and play the office politics game.
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9
10/01/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
This really works. I think managers all over should shed their narrow thinking on employee management and focus on "results". Personally, I have been in environments where superiors instill fear and harsh vocabulary to others under them. Another incident which inflicts, is painful and highly demotivating is when superiors are behind you checking every small activity and ensuring you are not wasting your time. Some superiors even make comments which are undesirable like "you should try for an editor's post (smilingly).." when you are found reading the newspaper. Therefore, in such light this concept is a Welcome news.
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10
10/01/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
The concept of being flexible is will realy work, provided employees are more commited with a sence of belonging, which in turn would reflect the management attitude. If the boss fells he is BIG BOSS and wishes to check of all that happens around, then this concept will not see the light, at least in his/her tenure.
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11
10/02/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
Seems to me you're talking about leading instead of managing, which is desperately needed in the 21st century. If you can make that mental shift, you're half way there.
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12
10/07/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
This is the reason why i advocate understanding people, by talking to them, rather that putting them through an 'automated" process.
This applies very well to to the hiring process too, where preconvceived screening "rules" actually gets rid of more useful people than bad ones. No wonder some organisztions can't get good people!
Yep, thumbs up to this artilce.
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13
10/10/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
WOW! Great article! This week, the entire sales force of the company I worked for quit. These were seasoned, professional, and highly successful salespeople, including the sales manager. Could it be that the company be because the company had a policy of making us clock in and out each day (we were straight commissioned by the way), read all of our emails, and monitored all phone calls? These were outside salespeople, who were highly respected by their customers. Now the President is in a quandry over emails that are coming in from customers asking their (now former) sales people, how they can follow them to their new companies. Over my working career, I have come up with several quotations that I have found very appropriate for some of the micro-managed companies I have seen. I have seen many employees days tied up with countless meetings to the point where I started saying things like, "Never let work get in the way of having a meeting." And, "When all is said and done, too much is said, and too little is done." On the flip side of the relaxed rules environment as some hav already mentioned, are the people who take advantage, such as the guy who was outside on constant smoke breaks who left others to field calls that should be handled by him, or the other employee who slept at his desk on a regular basis. Treat people like adults, and have a way to quickly weed out the dead wood, and you have a great working environment. And as someone else said, lead.
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14
10/23/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
I would add two things to this. One the Boss has the responsibility of making sure everyone knows what results the Boss is accountable for. In that way they understand the significance of what they are seeking as results and understand where their effect starts and stops.
Secondly, it would be very useful to have specific clarity on howthose results make a difference, the specific consequences for achieving and not achieving those results (consequences are the actions and impacts that follow a result - both good or bad).
Today, working people can't just rely on simply doing their job. They have to know the impact of what they do and make decisions about how to deply themselves.
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15
10/23/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
oops meant to say deploy themselves.
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16
10/24/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
Wow! Everything this advocates is entirely opposite of the way the Dept of the Army organization, for which I work, operates.
If you look at organizational strategy and management philosophy from the 16th century, you will find the current model being used.
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17
10/27/08 | Report as spam
RE: How to Get ROWE Working for Your Team
Being in a project oriented industry, where everyones work depends on the other's, ROWE works only if there is a historical reference as to ... this task takes x, long and that task takes y long, and all these A-B-C activities depending on them, take so long ... and, then can any of these activities lead to efficiently loading up all the other activities and resources earlier than usual (reducing overhead), ... etc., etc.
Do some of these activities tie to office hours prevailing in their respective industries, etc. ...
I have an enviable position where, an activity that NORMALY takes two to four weeks, which if I do it per ROWE I can accomplish it in 3 days, going flat out - all hours of the day and night working at home and creating electronic working models and design data sets. This loads up all the other disciplines to get cracking ... and the project takes off two to three weeks earlier, and thereby salvaging actual manhours which would have been allocated to OVHD or people would have just ambled along with low scale activities, ready to kick into high gear of design, procurements, fabrications, etc ... etc...
So it is activity oriented, that, that one needs to selectively allow ROWE for ... then the constant question is most people need to have a presence for interaction with all others, whereas some don't, but then resentment, envy, etc. builds up. So how does one tackle that? I just do it in a thick skinned manner, though the Company is making HUGE benefits from this but they can not openly support it as I get constantly reminded.
Any ideas?
epm360
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18
03/18/09 | Report as spam
So it is activity oriented, that, that one needs to selectively allow ROWE for ... then the constant question is most people need to have a presence for interaction with all others, whereas some don't, but then resentment, envy, etc
