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By Root 705 0

kind of office environment and not feeling judged. You walk in at three. You have been gone for three days, still doing your job, from home or a golf resort, or the coffee shop. You walk in and people say hello and that’s it. There are no looks, no rude little smiles, no eye rolls, no ostracism, no nothing. You don’t have to anticipate any Sludge or ready a reason for why you’ve been “MIA” for three days or make up some nonsense about how hard you’ve been working to make up for the fact that you haven’t been around. Instead you walk into a completely neutral space, because everyone is getting the same treatment. You’re not judging them so they’re not judging you.

So if people aren’t judging you then what happens? You make sure that you’re getting your job done. Because if you’re not you’re in big trouble. You’re really going to stand out. You can’t fake it anymore—you have to do your job. You have to communicate with your coworkers and your manager. You have to figure out how to make things work better and smarter and more efficiently. So you walk in at three and you do your job.

As we’ve said before, work isn’t that different. It feels different. And having people not judge your use of your time and only judge your accomplishments is an amazingly liberating feeling. Enjoy your Nyquil.

Nobody talks about how many hours they work.

This Guidepost can be a real treat for a lot of people, because they now don’t have to play a game they know they can’t win.

You know that person in your office who brags about the marathon workweek? The one who you almost expect to show you their battle scars? Or the people who do this kind of fake complaining about how many meetings they’re in? The ones who can’t believe how many meetings they have and how they just don’t have a minute to take a break from being so incredibly important and in demand? If they got any more necessary to the organization they would lose their minds. Or what about the vacation martyrs? Or the eat-at-the-desk martyrs? Or the I-don’t-have-time-to-eat martyrs?

In a ROWE you never have to listen to that crap again. You get no extra credit for spending time. There are no time card heroes. No overtime heroes.

As one Best Buy employee put it, “If someone said that they worked sixty hours, the first reaction is, Who cares? The second reaction is, Well then you better show me sixty hours of rock-star work. Because that’s all anyone wants to know about. What did you get done?”

In a ROWE, if you want to come in on weekends or stay late or come in early, people will assume that is your personal choice about your work style. They will not assume that you are more dedicated, more hardworking, more accomplished. In fact, if you really pile on the hours, it might even raise some red flags.

In a ROWE people will offer you tips for doing your job better.

In a ROWE your manager will try to help you make things more efficient so you can dig deeper into your job.

In a ROWE people will smile politely and ask you what you got done.

People in a ROWE sometimes describe this Guidepost in terms of clarity. When people aren’t talking about hours or bragging about hours—when the business is not recognizing time but results—then things are clearer. Rather than measuring time and effectiveness in your job, you just measure effectiveness. Identifying and solving problems then becomes much simpler.

This doesn’t mean that people milk the system or that there is no capacity planning. You can still talk about time. You can still plan around time. “I think this will take two weeks” or “we need to build in a month to make sure that happens.” It’s more a matter of not basing achievement on time.

This is not easy for some people. There are a lot of people out there who have based their lives and work identities on being the one with the iron butt. And there are people who need—or feel they need—to put in long hours to get the work done. Still, this Guidepost really puts the nail in the Presenteeism coffin. Isn’t that what bragging about