Is Your Leadership Encouraging Screen or Face Time?
Is your obsession with order driving your company to input more data and generate more reports? Is it distracting your employees from delighting your customer?
Yesterday, a hundred megabyte drive was sufficient storage; today it's in the terabytes. The drastic reduction of costs associated with data storage is allowing companies to save, compile, and sort to discover incremental performance of their people. This incessant need to measure, control, and create predictability within the business may be having a counter-intuitive effect on the company and its staff's abilities to serve the customer, however.
In order to successfully use all this data, it needs to be converted into actionable information. Which means someone is entering the data, another is determining the relevancy, and your managers are reading it to take actions. What used to be a single document is now a dashboard full of meters, indicators, and controls. And it's eating up lots of your organization's energy and time. While you're all assessing the data piles, who is serving the customer?
It might be helpful to think of this as Screen Time (data collection, information assessment, and dash board controls) verses Face Time (human-to-human interactions). What is your Screen Time to Face Time ratio? What is it for your front-line employees and their managers? If you're like many companies, your supervisors are becoming less capable of managing people (Face Time) and more capable of managing information (Screen Time). Here's the problem: As you try to move all this information to action, your people can no longer effectively engage customers. They have stopped building their people strengths by spending too much time on Screen Time.
Gary Cohen:What are your top 10 questions you ask your clients to move them forward toward ROWE? The questions organizations need to ask themselves in order to move toward ROWE are based on the 13 Guideposts:
Cali & Jody 1) Are people in your organization able to make common sense decisions about what they work on and what they don’t work on, as long as they reach their outcomes? [And not just the “senior” people, but everyone] 2) Do you have core hours? Why? 3) Is every meeting in your organization optional? EVERY meeting? 4) What time is it on the clock when people are “coming in late” to your office? What time is it when they’re “coming in early”? 5) How many hours do you expect people to work – in a day? In a week? Why? 6) If someone is going to not work on a Thursday, do they submit vacation time? 7) How are your employees available when they’re not working? 8) Who do your employees need to tell if they’re going to leave the office for 3 hours and go to a movie? 9) How clear and measurable are your employees’ goals and expectations? 10) How do you know if your employees are reaching their outcomes?
Gary Cohen:As a leader what are the questions that I was likely asking before Rowe to align, engage, motivate, & hold co-workers accountable? And what do those questions change to in the new environment?
Cali & Jody: As a leader, there are questions you might be asking today that you think are engaging and motivating employees, and helping them to hold each other accountable. However, the ROWE mindset might change them. Here are some examples:
Pre-ROWE: “Let’s get everyone together next Friday for a barbecue.” “Let’s plan an off-site teambuilding event.”
ROWE: Team socialization is driven by the team, not the manager. If a team is experiencing low engagement in the work, it won’t be solved by spending more time together – it could, in fact, make the situation worse!
Pre-ROWE: “Let’s congratulate Eric for the great job he did on his last project. He actually gave up Thanksgiving dinner with his family and came in last weekend to meet his deadlines.”
ROWE: “Let’s congratulate Eric for the great job he did on his last project. His outcome was to deliver a system for delivering our product that would improve customer satisfaction by 10 points. The system he created has done just that!” [No mention of time, hours, or effort – the praise is for the end outcome]
Pre-ROWE: “I’ve noticed that you’ve been falling short on your expectations over the last few months. Let’s have you come back into the office vs. working at home and see if things improve.”
ROWE: “I’ve noticed that you’ve been falling short on your expectations over the last few months. What can I do to assist you? Are you clear on the expectations?” [No reference to where the work is happening]
Gary Cohen:What successes and failures have you had with ROWE since you started your new organization? What was the context that allowed for the success and failures? Jody: There have been countless successes with ROWE since our organization, CultureRx, has spun off from Best Buy. Each person who says “My life is better now because of the ROWE mindset” or “I’m producing 20% more now than I used to”, or “I won’t be taking a position at another company for more money because they don’t have ROWE” is a success story. ROWE teams become more productive, are more engaged in their work, retain their best employees, and in general, are much happier.
Cali: When the ROWE movement is stunted in an organization, it’s due to leadership not walking their talk. We were working with an organization awhile back where the CEO had communicated to the employees that ROWE was going to be their future. We brought the employees about halfway through their ROWE migration and at that point in time, the CEO became very, very uncomfortable about the reality that was staring him in the face. In order to get to increased productivity and engagement, he realized he would need to let go of the traditional control he had. He’d been used to having control over employees’ time and physical location, but in a ROWE, you’re not paying for a chunk of time. You’re paying people for a chunk of work. In this particular organization, the ROWE migration ceased. This was extremely unfortunate because the employees had had their eyes opened to a much more efficient, common sense way of approaching work – which would make them much happier – and it was snatched away from them.
Gary Cohen:Changing any culture is difficult at best. What were the obstacles that you faced during the change? Cali & Jody: The biggest obstacles to this culture change are: 1) The power of time. Today, the workplace operates under this equation: Time + Physical Presence = Results. This is an old, outdated, out to lunch way of looking at things. Time and physical presence mean nothing. Every day, people are sitting in their cubes for hours on end, but they might not be producing anything. Managers have a false sense of security that if their employees are sitting in their cubes, they’re producing. Not the case. 2) The beliefs we have about the way work should happen. 3) Judgment (Sludge) – [defined in a separate response] ROWE is a grassroots change. It’s bottom-up. This scares leadership in organizations because they fear that their control is going away. Control over things that don’t matter does go away, but the new control is all about whether or not outcomes are being reached. This is a very difficult shift for managers to make because they’ve been trained to be hall monitors. The new generation of companies, though, will be all about results – and their managers will be, too.
Gary Cohen:If a company was not willing to take on such massive change, what one small step could they take that would provide inspiration for further change? Cali & Jodi: Depending on the size of your organization, there are different strategies for moving into a ROWE. If you’re an organization of more than 500 people, we’d recommend identifying one group to pilot ROWE. Once success occurs and there’s data to show, the rest of the organization can move in chunks. This way, the culture change moves at a good pace. In an organization of 500 or fewer, have the leadership team read Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It and engage everyone in a discussion about the pieces of a ROWE that are most appealing and most nerve-racking. The discussion will lead to a few things you can focus on that will move you closer to the ROWE mindset.
Gary Cohen: Is there something in the timing of human development and this mix of generations (Boomers, X, & Y) that makes ROWE work today or would this always have worked? Cali & Jody: Interesting question! The ROWE mindset would always have worked. We actually heard from a ROWE fan with a point of view that ROWE has always existed. Thousands of years ago, people had to figure out the most efficient ways to reach their outcome – eating. That’s ROWE. If you have to find food to stay alive, you’re probably not going to spend your time chatting with the people around you. That’s ROWE. The mix of generations just provides the perfect scenario for the benefits of ROWE to be experienced. It could be easy for Boomers and Traditionalists to dictate to X and Y how they need to approach work. However, that severely undermines efficiency and holds organizations back from what they could be producing.
Gary Cohen:What type of companies does this work for and where would you expect it to fail? Cali & Jody: ROWE works in every organization. Focusing on results is something every organization in the country – in the world – should be doing. ROWE makes that real. The only way ROWE fails is if the people in the organization don’t take accountability for making it happen.
Gary Cohen: If all things are currently working well in an organization (good margin, motivated work force, and clear and compelling mission) is ROWE something I should know about or investigate? And why or why not? Cali & Jody: If things are working well in an organization, looking into ROWE would be a very smart move for two reasons: 1) how is “doing well” defined? And how “well” do you want to be doing? You can always go higher. 2) ROWE is inevitable. With technology improvements and societal demographics shifting, ROWE will be everywhere. The question isn’t if organizations will change, but when. And those that shift soonest will have the advantage.
Gary Cohen:What tends to be people's first reaction to ROWE when they learn about it? Cali & Jody: When people learn about ROWE, they form a pretty concrete opinion – either they like the idea and see the benefits or they don’t like it and think it won’t work. One side or the other – not too many folks land in the middle.
Gary Cohen:How do you respond to those reactions? Cali & Jody: We spend our time on the people that can see the benefits of ROWE. It’s tempting to focus on those that are adamant ROWE won’t work – to keep trying to convince them of the benefits. The reality is that if they really are adamant about their point of view, it’s best to let them see the success stories occur around them. Energy is best spent on those that can see the opportunities.
Gary Cohen:How do you get around the issue of leaders and the myth of control that is so prevalent in our culture? What breaks down the power and control in organizations so they can move to a ROWE?(Interview continued tomorrow)
Why Work Sucks! And How to Fix it. Interview with Cali Ressler & Jody Thompson
Cali Ressler & Jody Thompson Interview Cali and Jody created the Results-Only Work Environment from within the bowels of Corporate America – while juggling families, careers, and all the other demands of life. Work sucked and the traditional solution--more flexible schedules--wouldn't address the problem. So they set out to fix it. Today, Cali and Jody are leading a global movement to forever change the way we work and live. For everyone.
Gary Cohen:In your book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, you discuss a process you call ROWE. What is ROWE? Cali & Jody: In our book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, we explain exactly what a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) is. It’s an environment where each person is free to do whatever they want whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. It’s a true adult work environment where measurable outcomes are agreed upon and everyone reaches those outcomes how, when, and where it makes most sense.
Gary Cohen:What is it that ROWE is not? Cali & Jody:ROWE is not telecommuting, flextime, a 4-day workweek, or any other kind of flexibility program. In fact, ROWE is not a program at all. It’s a culture shift in the way we approach work that breaks down the 1950s rules and beliefs that have kept us shackled us for so long.
Gary Cohen: How does it work? Cali & Jody: Currently, there is a cycle that exists in workplaces that continues to keep everything operating as if it were 1950. The cycle consists of 1) the power of time, 2) the beliefs we have about the way work should happen, and 3) judgment. The ROWE migration process breaks this cycle.
The first step involves identifying the language in the work environment that makes judgments about how people are spending their time. We call this Sludge. Sludge might sound like this: “10:00 and you’re just getting in? I wish I could come in late every day”, “Banker’s hours again? Must be nice”, or “There goes Jill to pick up her sick kid again at daycare – wish I had a kid and could get some time off”. During the ROWE migration process, employees learn about an Environmental Sludge Eradication Strategy that they put into practice that rids the environment of this language. That is the catalyst for rewiring our decades-old beliefs about work. The migration process is paced appropriately so that the new order emerges gradually and new ways of approaching work continue to evolve.
Gary Cohen:What is the mental model you have for ROWE? And how do you transfer that to others? Cali & Jodi: The mental model we have for ROWE is based in an adaptive change process. It hits at the heart of what people believe about their co-workers, what constitutes ‘dedication’ to an organization, what ‘hard work’ looks like, and more. ROWE throws out the permission-based, childlike, paternalistic environment that exists in so many organizations today and replaces it with an adult environment that’s all about accountability.
We have a finely-tuned 3-phase process that we bring organizations through if they want to become ROWE-approved. We also conduct speaking engagements around the country at conferences, organizations, and universities for people that just want a dose of ROWE to kickstart their own mindsets. More about the ROWE migration process can be found at www.culturerx.com or by e-mailing info@culturerx.com.
Gary Cohen:Where did you first introduce this idea? Jody and Thompson and I created ROWE while we were employees at Best Buy. We first introduced it, on the down-low, to two departments at their corporate headquarters.
Gary Cohen:What was the question you were answering when you decided to lead the change that transpired at Best Buy? Cali & Jody: When we decided to lead the change at Best Buy, we were answering this question: “What would the perfect work environment be like – where people could live their lives the way they want to and the organization would be getting maximum productivity?”
Gary Cohen:What change were you seeking and what modifications were made to your expectations from your initial idea? Cali & Jody: With ROWE, we were seeking to create an environment where people could do whatever they want whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. We’ve never made any modifications to that definition because it’s the way things should be! We did, however, create markers to guide people in the right direction – the 13 Guideposts.
Gary Cohen:What successes and failures have you had with ROWE since you started your new organization? What was the context that allowed for the successes and failures? (Continued)
Gary Cohen: How do you get around the issue of leaders and the myth of control that is so prevalent in our culture?What breaks down the power and control in organizations so they can move to a ROWE?
Cali & Jody: The 13 Guideposts. These are 13 statements that everyone in a team/organization work toward making true in a ROWE. They systematically cut through the hierarchy and political muck that exists in organizations today. They force everyone to examine the beliefs they have about how work needs to happen, and flips them upside down. The 13 Guideposts are:
1) People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer’s time, or the company’s money. 2) Employees have the freedom to work any way they want. 3) Every day feels like Saturday. 4) Work isn’t a place you go, it’s something you do. 5) People have an unlimited amount of paid time off as long as the work gets done. 6) Leaving the workplace at 2pm is not considered leaving early; arriving at the workplace at 2pm is not considered coming in late. 7) Nobody talks about how many hours they work. 8) Every meeting is optional. 9) It’s okay to catch a movie on a Tuesday afternoon; it’s okay to grocery shop on a Wednesday morning; it’s okay to take a nap on a Thursday afternoon. 10) There are no work schedules. 11) Nobody feels overworked, guilty, or stressed out. 12) There aren’t any last-minute fire drills. 13) There’s no judgment about how you spend your time.
Gary Cohen: What are the pain points an organization will be feeling to know this is something that they want to take on in their business?
Cali and Jody: An organization might not be feeling any pain points at all before exploring ROWE. They might be at the top of their game or #1 in their industry with low turnover, high engagement, etc. Their intent is to remain in that place and they want to lay the foundation to do that in the 21st century – and they do it with the ROWE mindset. Some organizations are feeling pain points. They might be experiencing high voluntary turnover, low morale, decreased customer satisfaction, or stagnant productivity levels.
Gary Cohen: Have you seen businesses that have bought the book and started implementation without you being involved in the change? What are some of the success stories?
Cali and Jody: There are many businesses that have read Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It that have instituted the ROWE mindset without the assistance of CultureRx. This is testament to the social aspect of this change. A couple great success stories:
1) The Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council. Their CEO, Jessica Lawrence, read the book and made moves (quickly!) to implement ROWE. You can read about their success here: (click). 2) Matchstic. More about their journey here: (click).
How long does it take to get a team to agree on four words?
Way longer then you would imagine. As part of strategic planning exercise with organization I always have a team begin with a values exercise to determine what the core values of the business stakeholders are and align those values among those team members. Regardless of whether the organization has pre-determined set of stated values or not the variety of values that surface from the paritisipating team members is amazing.
Amazing because very few of the values that originate during the individual accumulation process are the same among the senior team members. It is no wonder that many organizations are feeling stretched by the arrays of values, being espoused by their leadership team.
Over the course of approximately 4 hours with vigerous discussion the team will arrive at 3 or 4 values with agreed definitions. These values are always in priority order.
What is interesting is that no matter what the objections to the process – typically because of commitment phobia (Team members struggle with the reduction process of going from many values down to very few) – They buckle down and feel good & relieved by their achievement. Typically they feel the lack of originality to the ones values they chose. That is until I ask them the questions that resolve them to the act of signing in blood (OK no blood is drawn) with their words. It is not only the values that they have chosen, it is additionally the prioritization, and the meaning making they do as a team in their team’s discovery.
When a team takes 3 to 4 hours to arrive at 4 words think how much other communication is likely inherently not aligned among organizations stakeholders – especially given the speed in which we do business today.
Last night my wife and I went out to dinner on Lake Minnetonka. We pulled up to the restaurant via boat. There was a wait to find a spot. One of the dock guys says, "just wait your turn it will go a lot faster for you than staying close to this side of the dock." The other dock guy says, "I will work with you and find you a spot." He adds, "I am going to move this boat forward and you pull in right behind." The original dock guy simply looks down an realizes he was not solving the customers problem - finding more space to park. Needless to say the one who helped got a big tip from us and I have little doubt he is the gross and net winner of tips overall! How do you spot that talent and initiative early and develop those people to be the culture of your organization?
