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Business as war means that there are an acceptable number of casualties.

Business as war means there is collateral damage.

Business as war means people and ideas and sometimes even ethics are sacrificed.

What is done to ordinary workers in the name of business as war? The answer is Sludge. If we all accept that work has to be a certain way and feel a certain way, if we all accept that sometimes you have to make sacrifices (of your time, of your sense of fairness, of your sense of decency), then there is really no limit to what can be done in the name of work.

But we’re not just talking about business ethics, about the decisions that companies and corporations make. While we believe that businesses should have integrity and ethics, this is not as much our concern as how people are treated and how they feel at work. We’re really talking about changing the whole conversation about what work is for. It doesn’t have to be a battlefield where a few people win (or lose) big. Work can be a place where everyone can find their level, their place, their sense of purpose. Everyone can be respected and valued, and not just because it’s the humane thing to do, but because it makes business sense.

Because when business is war, you don’t have to respect people as individuals. Orders are orders.

When business is war, you don’t have to trust them. Everything is on a need to know basis.

When business is war, people aren’t really people. They are pawns in the chess game.

The sad fact is that our culture believes these attitudes about work are okay. Call it Sludge Resignation. People have no choice but to put up with the status quo. You can’t fight City Hall. It is what it is. So we put up with feeling like we’re at war all the time, and we sacrifice our freedom and the ability to feel good because that’s what you have to do to get ahead. You lose your personality and your identity and your humanity. You take one for the team. Because if you don’t, the thinking goes, then you don’t have what it takes.

We find stories like Javier’s personally gratifying. The idea that ROWE could be a real help to someone in their time of need makes us feel wonderful. At the same time, we didn’t just offer his story as a feel-good testimonial about the power of ROWE. We also challenge you to ask yourself why work should be any other way. What would be gained, either on the human level or the business level, to punish Javier for having demands outside of work? It would be like punishing him for being a person.

There will never be a time when his story isn’t uplifting and encouraging, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if his story were also the norm? We don’t see this kind of gain for the employees as a loss for employers. As Javier said, he and his group have never been more productive.

Of course there are going to be winners and losers. There is going to be success and failure. But we’re not at war and we shouldn’t have to feel like we’re at war just because we’ve gone to work.

So these next Guideposts, while they deal with something that seems squishy like feelings, are really the heart of a Results-Only Work Environment. A ROWE doesn’t make your job easy, but it will make work not feel so hard. If people don’t feel free and rested and trusted then you don’t have a ROWE. Because the whole key to a ROWE is that the way work looks and feels is completely different. It is not recognizable as work. It is something else, something better.

Here are the Guideposts that make it happen:

• There is no judgment about how you spend your time.

• Nobody talks about how many hours they work.

• Nobody feels guilty, overworked, or stressed-out.

• Every day feels like Saturday.

There is no judgment about how you spend your time.

This is the no-tolerance-for-Sludge Guidepost. One Best Buy team, for example, didn’t have a lot of dramatic Sludge pre-ROWE, but even after migration it took time to get rid of it entirely. There would be subtle