Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It_ The Results-Only Revolution - Cali Ressler [15]
Voices from a ROWE: Kara
Kara is a designer who supports the dot-com division. She is in her early thirties and has been with Best Buy for nine years. She’s been in a ROWE for three years.
When my team first started ROWE our Sludge session was fresh in our minds, and we all made numerous jokes about it. We were testing the waters. Were we in this together or not? Was this ROWE thing real? Someone would get up to leave and they’d be teased about going to a movie and people would watch the interaction. Would the person feel guilty and sit back down? Or would they laugh and keep walking? If someone didn’t return an e-mail after three hours the slacker jokes would start. Would the person get defensive? Or laugh it off and ask what was needed of them?
This went on for a while until the day when my manager put on her coat to go home after lunch, and she squelched the jokes and called us out on our Sludge. This was the end of the jokes, as we realized that she was fully on board and ROWE was real! It was a great day. If our manager does it, then so can we.
Still, in the beginning it was frustrating to know that someone was shopping while I was in over my head with a deadline; until later, when that same person was in over their head and I was shopping. I didn’t want to be Sludged by my coworkers, so I didn’t Sludge them. When my coworker told me that he spent an afternoon helping his son with his curveball, I told him how wonderful I thought that was. It was my way of letting him know that I expected the same reaction from him when I exercised my freedom. My whole team shared this mentality of support, which was very important in stopping Sludge and making a successful ROWE environment.
Later I realized that a big difference between my team (where we didn’t Sludge each other) and the team in the next aisle (where everyone spent every day in the office) was our manager. She trusted us. She saw that we continued to meet our deadlines, and she also wanted a work-life balance for herself, and so she stopped the Sludge the way we were trained to.
In addition to a manager who fully supported ROWE, I had a team that really wanted ROWE to work. We were open and honest about any challenges that ROWE created. We had frequent, honest discussions in our team meetings. This kept us from turning Sludge jokes into a passive-aggressive way of communicating our frustrations.
Not having Sludge allows me to really feel like my work and life are in balance. I still have those crazy stretches of weeks where I probably put in more than forty hours, but now I have times when I get to shut off my computer at noon and do whatever I want with my time, Sludge (and guilt) free!
CHAPTER TWO
This Thing We Call Sludge
In the last chapter we talked about the need to change the fundamental nature of work, but isn’t there an easier solu-tion? It seems that people are feeling that the current way of work is too rigid and uniform, that if the workplace loosened up a bit some of these problems surrounding time and the way work looks would go away. Then maybe people would feel more in control. Isn’t the answer just giving people a little more flexibility? Can’t telecommuting or flextime give people what they need?
No.
We hesitate to slam flexible work arrangements. We’d hate to see someone who’s begged and pleaded and cajoled and maneuvered to have a four-day workweek feel undermined.
But flextime is nonsense.
Companies aren’t stupid. They know they need to say they’re flexible to attract talent. We challenge you to find a major corporation that doesn’t have a flextime section of their employee handbook—a section filled with relaxed, smiling faces and promises of understanding,