Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It_ The Results-Only Revolution - Cali Ressler [34]
Contrast what I have just described with the eight-to-five life I lived a couple of years ago. While my friends sit in traffic and work a traditional lifestyle I work at my leisure from my apartment, or not at all, depending on how I feel and what I have planned for the day. This year alone I traveled through Europe for nineteen days following my favorite artist from Paris to Brussels, Amsterdam, Prague, and Cologne. I have a picture of Dave Matthews and me outside a small club in Brussels, Belgium. I spent a weekend at Taste of Chicago playing cribbage and Frisbee in a park, and capped the whole experience off with a show on Sunday night in the Windy City. I woke up that Monday in Chicago on a workday without a worry in the world. My only concern was if I was going to make it back to Minneapolis in time to go the Best Buy Charity Classic to see Dave Matthews for the second night in a row. This past weekend I took Friday and Monday off and had a weekend getaway with my girlfriend. We camped in a state forest and went to the Alpine Valley Amphitheater to see her favorite band, Nickelback. I spent Sunday at Noah’s Ark water park cruising down waterslides. I will be in Chicago again for Lollapalooza and back at Alpine Valley for another show in a group camping site with forty friends from all over the United States.
None of what I have just described would be possible in the old work environment that helps create the perception of “Evil Corporate America.” I basically do what I want, when I want, all the time. I do my work, for the most part, when it is convenient for me. Since I always get my work done I can enjoy life to the fullest while working for a great company.
CHAPTER FOUR
What Time Feels Like in a ROWE
By 2005 ROWE was reaching critical mass. There were enough people working in a ROWE that it was getting harder and harder for anyone at any level to ignore the change, even if the idea still made them (or their manager) uncomfortable. Our presentations of ROWE, both to upper-level management and to the teams we were training, had evolved, and we were pretty secure in our ideas and our methods. The calendar exercise was gone. We were spreading the word about time, belief, and judgment. Sludge sessions were now a little more structured and focused. (Rather than asking people to come up with Sludge, we would offer them common Sludge phrases and ask them to explore their hidden meanings.) And we had arrived at our definition of a Results-Only Work Environment.
The only thing that we felt was missing was a set of guiding principles for what life was like in a ROWE, so one day we sat down and wrote the 13 Guideposts for a Results-Only Work Environment. This set of statements came from our sessions with employees at all levels, and they were designed to serve multiple purposes. First, they had to flesh out the basic definition of a ROWE so we had something to give people in addition to “You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as the work gets done.” Second, we wanted people to have a handful of statements that they could refer to as they went through the adaptive change process. If ever they were feeling lost when trying to make a ROWE a reality, they could look at the Guideposts. Third and perhaps most important of all, we wanted to shock people.
As we’ve said before, even if you get rid of the old attitudes about work, you need a new set of attitudes to take their place. You need a new culture. Making this happen means that every employee goes through what we call a migration process. The migration process does not involve training. People do not sit down with workbooks in a conference room for eight hours and study ROWE. Instead, ROWE facilitators introduce the same ideas you’ve encountered in this book—how time has a strange power over us, how we all labor under counterproductive beliefs