Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It_ The Results-Only Revolution - Cali Ressler [37]
We’re not saying that now suddenly work doesn’t take any time out of your life.
Just because your effectiveness at work is no longer measured by time doesn’t mean that work no longer consumes time. As we’ve said before, you still have a job to do and while an insight or an idea travels at the speed of thought, the execution of anything worthwhile requires diligence, attention, effort, and time. So if you’re not pulling your weight, then the people on the team and your manager need to hold you accountable. Just because you can no longer be late doesn’t mean you can’t be lame.
What changes in a ROWE is that you and your coworkers and your manager no longer have to pay attention to time as a measure of productivity. There is no longer that extra layer of concern to weigh you down or cloud the issue. You might look at the clock to see if you have an appointment or a meeting, but you’re not looking at the clock and thinking, Okay, it’s three o’clock now so I need to get this part of the project done by five because that’s when work ends. The rest of the job will have to get done tomorrow when work starts at eight. Instead you might look at the clock and think, Okay, it’s three o’clock so I’m going to leave now to beat rush hour, go home, work out and eat, and then tackle this project at eight and finish it up by midnight so the deck will be clear tomorrow for the next phase.
What we have traditionally called “time management” is also different in a ROWE. Think about the typical time management course in which you move around your tasks and responsibilities with priorities or quadrants or efficiency buckets or whatever. The problem with all of these programs is that they don’t address the root problem, which is that work is supposed to start at a certain time and stop at another, regardless of whether or not this is best for the employee or the business. Typical time management programs are asking you to make do with limited control, when the only solution is total control. These programs are asking you to find freedom within a prison.
YEAH, BUT ...
“If somebody is going to leave at two shouldn’t they mark it on their calendar?”
At first people think it’s common courtesy to let others know where they are and when they are working. But think about it this way: If you tell someone where you are and what you’re doing at two on a Tuesday afternoon, then you also have to tell them what you’re doing at midnight on a Saturday. We say that as long as the work is getting done, then it doesn’t matter. In a ROWE asking someone about their time is a personal question. As long as the work is getting done then it’s nobody’s business but your own.
In a ROWE time becomes something you truly manage . . . because it’s yours. You stop playing games with yourself and your time (now I’m working, now I’m not working) and instead you focus on what needs to get done. When it gets done (as long as deadlines are met) is up to you. So if you wake up at five in the morning and have the solution to a problem, you work on it at five in the morning, without guilt or resentment, and then you might do something for yourself or your family from eight to eleven, also without guilt or resentment.
Your whole internal monologue about work changes because your sense of time changes. One common refrain we hear from employees after they’ve been in a ROWE for more than one or two years is that they do not think about time anymore. They come in at a different time every day. They have no concept of when they’re working or when they’re not working or how many hours they have worked or haven’t worked. They are so focused on results that they literally can’t account for the time.3 And if you asked them how many hours they worked they would think you were being weird.