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By Root 780 0

a name for it, use it. You can say to people, calmly, nonaccusingly, “That’s Sludge.” Not only will you call them on it, you just might start an interesting and necessary conversation about the attitudes behind that comment. Even little changes in your language can have big effects. When talking about these work-life balance issues, stop using the word flexibility and start using the word control (“I’m looking for a job with control” as opposed to “I’m looking for a job with flexibility”). Stop using the words early and late and antiquated terms like by the end of business today. Stop talking about how many hours you work or how hard you’re working. But by all means start using the word results. Whether you’re talking to your coworker or manager or even your friends and family, steer those conversations toward what really needs to get done. What are the results we’re trying to drive?

We think you’ll find that taking even small actions along these lines will not only make work suck a little less, but you’ll also find that conversations will naturally steer toward the concept of ROWE. Which brings us to the final thing you can do to advance this cause, and that’s spread the word.

In addition to helping the approximately three thousand people at Best Buy corporate headquarters migrate into a ROWE, for the past two years we have been traveling around the country speaking to business leaders, community organizations, schools, law firms, health care organizations, and anyone else who is willing to listen. As a result we’ve gotten pretty comfortable with the storm of Yeah, Buts that kick up every time we talk about these ideas. And we can see how an individual who is new to this idea might balk at trying to talk to other people about ROWE. Where to begin? How to handle all those Yeah, Buts? Do I focus on the human results or the business results? How do I explain Sludge, or our concepts like time, belief, and judgment?

First of all, a word about integrity. In our minds ROWE is a movement that will live or die on people being able to teach, inspire, and lead, not trick, bully, or intimidate. That’s the old model, the top-down model that management has used to scare you or trick you into thinking that worthless time-management seminar is really going to change your life. You can’t force people into a ROWE; you have to inspire people to believe in this change. So we’re not asking people to push ROWE onto the world. We’re looking for believers who want other people to believe because it’s right.

Second, all those Yeah, Buts come from the same place: belief. People raise objections to the logistics of a ROWE because as much as they think work sucks, they believe it’s the only way to go. Most people have not thought deep and long about why and how the workplace should function. We inherit these attitudes and all those Yeah, Buts are just the sound of someone getting riled up by your challenging their beliefs.

Finally, we encourage you to have fun when talking about ROWE. We once read an article about how the majority of the jokes in The Simpsons are about religion, and we can see why: People’s beliefs are funny. We’re not advocating that you belittle or ridicule people (or at least not too much) but those daily reminders of the absurdity of work are all around us. One of our favorites is when we’re on an airplane after a short flight and as soon as the plane lands people whip out their cell phones and call in to the office to tell someone that they’ve landed. Then they go through this elaborate ritual of checking to make sure no one needed them (even though if someone did they’d probably have left a voice mail) and then to give the play-by-play of how they’re going to taxi to the gate, then go through baggage claim, then rent a car, then go to the hotel, etc. And we imagine the poor person on the other end of the line sagging into their chair having to listen when not only do they not care, but it doesn’t matter where the caller is. The only reason the caller is checking in is that they believe in availability.