In 1964, a New York City woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death near her home in Queens. Exaggerated newspaper reports said that 38 people had witnessed the attack and no one called the police. Further investigation into the murder refuted that story, but not before the public imagination had seized on the idea of how big social groups can drastically fail to provide even the most basic protection for individuals. The Genovese case prompted psychologists to study the so-called Bystander Effect, the phenomenon by which individuals fail to help one another because they believe someone else will take responsibility.

We’re not going to equate what happens in corporate America with murder. At the same time, when we read the stories you send us through the “Tell us why work sucks” link on this page, we see a lot of people suffering as workplace bystanders look on.

We see a lot of people who are stressed out, who feel out of control, who are struggling with the demands of work and life - and are getting no help from their companies.  Even worse, they are getting no help from their fellow coworkers, who take a “whaddya gonna do?” attitude about unfairness in the workplace.

In other words, we commiserate with each other, but we don’t stick up for each other. Consider this scene: a coworker comes in “late.” The boss dresses her down. When the boss leaves, you offer your sympathy. But why didn’t you stick up for her while the boss was there? Why didn’t you say, “Emily does great work.  Why don’t we focus on that vs. the time she gets to the office?”

In a traditional work environment, sticking up for someone like this is inconceivable. But not in a Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, there is no Bystander Effect because the organization is aligned to deliver results, not serve the company hierarchy, the soul-hardening politics, or the attendance policy in the employee handbook.

You don’t have bystanders when everyone benefits from having control over their time.

You don’t have bystanders when taking an active role in your work earns you more freedom (as opposed to more work).

You don’t have bystanders when helping other people is a way of helping yourself.

You don’t have bystanders when the boss is there to facilitate the work getting done, as opposed to enforcing the rules like a hall monitor.

What’s great about ROWE is that turning people from bystanders to upstanding workers happens as part of the migration.  We’ve found that people are, in fact, relieved to be able to focus on results rather than on office politics. The big change has to come from the organization as a whole. It means everyone from the CEO on down to the person working the front desk has to realign their thinking and their behavior. Once that happens the bystanders go away, and both people and the organization get to start living up to their potential.

We were very pleased to receive this post from an Italian blogger about Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. We were even more pleased when we ran it through Google Translate and found that even a computer-butchered version of the post still communicated the essence of ROWE.

Admittedly, the Guidepost about the elimination of concepts such as “late” and “early” doesn’t quite come through with the statement “get to 14 is not to be late and leave at the same time is not the first time.”

But “every day may be Saturday” is pretty close to “Every day feels like Saturday”, and “Every meeting is optional” survives the translator almost completely intact.

We were also encouraged to see the comments. Even with Europe’s different work culture, people have the same human concerns about a Results-Only Work Environment. They also have the same human hopes about ROWE.

Is it a dangerous idea? Or an appealing idea?

Yes!

Finally, we have found a new catchphrase in the post’s closing:

Wow would be an epochal change in culture, a dream, not try to make something every day, a small pebble for change, smile can do it.

To all you ROWE warriors out there, say it with us:

Smile can do it!

You rarely hear this question in a traditional work environment.  It’s assumed that everyone is hard at work doing…well, something.  If you show up at 8:00 and stay until 5:00, you’ve met expectations, right?

When all of a sudden you stop tracking time, stop putting in time, and stop talking about time, all that’s left is the work you’re actually getting paid to do.  When you stop using time as a measure of performance, everyone starts scrambling because the majority of people don’t know what “the work” is supposed to be.

We’re living in a world where it’s okay to meander through the work day, literally unclear about what you’re actually being measured on, and what you’re supposed to be delivering.  A world where employees set their goals the week before performance appraisal time (don’t deny it - we bet at least half of you out there have done this).  We’re in work environments where HR sends out e-mail after e-mail reminding us to complete our goal-setting activities and we move that activity to the bottom of our list.  The urgency to set measurable goals in a traditional work environment rarely exists because using time as a measure of loyalty, dedication and good work, in most cases, wins out over evaluation of the actual work.

Or, if we want to tell it like it is, we feel like this about goals.

Here’s the fact of the matter: Until we own our own time and have complete control over how we spend it, goal-setting will be just another useless activity that fills our time in the work environment.  And, a workforce with clear, measurable goals for each and every person will never happen.  Ever.

This is a real-life example:

Pre-ROWE

Manager: “We’ve been working on this strategy for awhile, and I really want you to crack the nut this year.”

Employee: “Got it.  I’ll do my best.”  ["I have no idea what you're asking for, but if I show up every day, stay late, and come to you next year with something that I think you might like, I should be okay."]

Post-ROWE

Manager: “We’ve been working on this strategy for awhile, and I really want you to crack the nut this year.”

Employee: “Let’s define ‘the nut’.  How will we know if I’ve cracked it?  How will it be measured?  What’s ‘meets expectations’ and ‘exceeds expectations’ on cracking the nut?”  ["If I can get clear on how to exceed expectations on cracking this nut, I can figure out the activities that will get me there and also plan how I'll volunteer at my child's school, coach her basketball team, and take a vacation to Miami."]

Our bet is that most of you have great goal-setting tools at your companies, but people aren’t actually using them.  Or, you use them, and then file the completed activity away - and 3 months later, you scratch you head and say “Where did I put that completed goal-setting guide?”

Goal-setting is not an activity.  Goal-setting is not an action on a quarterly checklist.  Getting clear on what you’re getting paid to do, and how to measure it is, and should be, status quo.  It should be the way business is done.  We can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard “If I let my people control their own time, how will I know if they’re working and what they’re supposed to be doing?” to which we exclaim “How do you know NOW?”

If you knew your team was going to migrate to ROWE within the next 3 months, would you feel clear enough about your goals and expectations to be comfortable?  If you’re a manager, would you be comfortable that each and every one of your employees knows exactly what their expectations are and that each expectation is measurable?

Picture this: We’re on our flight to Memphis to do the keynote at the TN SHRM conference.  Jody runs out of “fun” magazines and reaches for the in-flight publication.  All of a sudden, she gasps…loudly.  She hands the publication to me and I see an article titled “The Family Practice: Supervise your employees as if they were your children - with patience, compassion and a bit of tough love.”  Supervise your employees as if they were your children - just that much made us feel a bit nauseous.  But just wait…here’s the thing that had us ripping our hair out:

“Be a Role Model: True leaders lead by example.  They act morally and do what is right, so followers learn the correct path.  If you want your child to share his toys, you’ll share the remote with your spouse.  If you want your employees to come to work on time and put in extra hours when it’s busy, you’ll be at the office early and stay late.”

Are you feeling our pain?  This is the advice to leaders in 2008?

Here’s our rant: We will continue to see things like this.  We know that.  This is a classic representation of the current work culture that we (and you) are trying to change.  What we do ask is that when you see or hear leadership lessons - in publications, online, at conferences - that you ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do these leadership lessons have anything to do with results?
2. Will these leadership lessons help me attract and retain the best of the best?
3. Do these lessons ask me to behave in a way that shows I trust my employees?

We (us and all of you) are responsible for creating the work culture we have.  If we continue to work and live according to messages like those written in this magazine, we will remain status quo.  If we decide to buck the system and try new ways of doing things that are based on common sense and are good for our lives and the business, we will see change.  We own our present and our future.

One more thing: As you talk with people that are unhappy with the way things are in their work environment, ask them one question - what are you doing to change that?

We’re heading to Memphis to speak to the TN SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) group, and we’re dreading one thing: the early flight.  Neither of us are what you would call “morning people” and a 7:00 a.m. flight makes us downright crabby.  We’ll be sleeping on the plane and looking to grab a quick siesta when we get to the hotel, before grabbing dinner with the conference chair.  Lucky for us, we’re not sleep deprived.

But lack of sleep is getting to be more and more of a problem, especially for people’s health.  As this recent NYT’s article states: “…the attitude toward sleep in America - and in American business, in particular - has scarcely changed.  Corporate culture reveres the e-mail message sent at 3 a.m., the executive who rushes directly into a meeting from a red-eye flight.”  Well, if health concerns didn’t do the trick in getting businesses to realize how important sleep is, maybe the study at the heart of the NYT’s article will.  It finds that sleep helps us make connections between ideas - gives some truth to the old saying “Let me sleep on it.”

The article then goes on to talk about companies that have placed Energy Pods in their environments for naps and quick rests.  We cringed at the Pods.  Now that we might be making some headway on realizing how important sleep is, we’re going to encourage people to sleep at the office?  Because that’s where you’ll be most relaxed?

One of the findings we’re most proud of from the University of MN/National Institutes of Health study on ROWE at Best Buy is that ROWE employees get more sleep, and experience better quality sleep, than non-ROWE employees.  Given the Harvard study, guess it makes sense then that creativity on ROWE teams is a notch up from what it was pre-ROWE.

So we have to ask: If you had an Energy Pod in your office environment, would you use it?  And, if you do have them where you work, does anybody use them?

What can cost U.S. companies $10.5 billion in productivity by the end of January?  An awful, deadly disease that will wipe out half our population in the next 4 months?  No, apparently it’s Fantasy Football.  Yes, this is just like the claims made about March Madness - when “office time” is spent on these activities instead of on work, the clock is tick-tocking away and productivity is being lost.  According to the studies, that is.

What we do find somewhat promising in this article (one of the many that covers the bring-down-the-business practice of Fantasy Football) is that it ends with a quote about more managers starting to use a measurement of productivity rather than time.  Perhaps this is the last NFL season we’ll have to endure these ridiculous numbers being thrown around.

Before this weekend’s games, we thought we’d provide some analogies between ROWE and Fantasy Football for those of you that get into that kind of thing (and if you don’t, then do not read this or you’ll be adding to that $10.5 billion in lost productivity and we can’t have that!):

• The way we feel about some meetings in the work environment is similar to how we feel about our tight ends.  They’re meaningless and not worth any of our time.
• Some leagues are Keeper Leagues and others are Dynasty Leagues, where you get to keep your entire roster for the next year. Managers often choose to go ROWE because they want to keep their Dynasty Team year after year - ROWE will secure it for you.
• When someone is out with an injury for the week at the RB position, you have another RB that you can plug right in.  He’s a backup and your whole team doesn’t fall apart.  You’re covered for that position and you get a few points.  [Now if you were the one in your league that had Brady go down this year, your whole team might have fallen apart, but that’s an anomaly!)  Backups in a ROWE are similar - it’s not your top-notch player in the role all the time, but backups keep the team moving.
• Trading players is just like ROWE.  You’re scanning the NFL environment and making decisions about who to move around to reach your outcome of winning the league.  You find players that you think will provide more value to your team and you swap out the waste.  Employees in a ROWE are always making trades - making sure what’s on their plates is truly needed to get to an outcome.
• The “sleeper” on your Fantasy team performs better than you ever thought he would.  The “sleeper” on your work team needs control over his/her time to really shine - they’re stifled in the current environment and they’re meeting expectations - but once they’re set free, they will amaze you.

Good luck to all of you Fantasy players this weekend, and let’s hope ROWE has moved far enough by next fall that we don’t have companies worried about how much time their employees spend on their teams between 8:00 and 5:00.  After all, are we more worried about the Fantasy game or the real work?

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Contest announcement: Thanks to those of you that sent in your most non-ROWE policies. We found ourselves gritting our teeth when we read them, and thought Kurt’s policy on Extra Hours and Overtime was the most painful.  Congrats, Kurt - a signed copy of Why Work Sucks and a Work Sucks bumper magnet are on the way to you!

It won’t surprise you to know that one of our favorite commercials of all time is When I Grow Up.  We have a few additions for the next version:

• When I grow up, I want to be shamed for taking an hour and 20-minute lunch.
• When I grow up, I want to sit in traffic for 2 hours every day to go to my gray cube of happiness.
• When I grow up, I want my boss to tell me when it’s okay for me to spend time with my family.
• When I grow up, I want everyone to stare at me and shake their heads when I get into the office at 8:45.
• When I grow up, I want to ask permission to go to the doctor.

How did we get to this place where we have little to no control over these things?  How did we get to this place where we have no say over how we spend our time from 8:00 to 5:00?

There’s a problem with the demands/control equation in our lives.

Your demands include anything that requires your time - your job, your hobbies, your errands, your kids, your friends, etc.  And people’s demands are growing by leaps and bounds.  Here’s the thing: In a traditional office environment, where you have high demands and low control, life is hectic and miserable.  You’re trapped in a system that piles on the demands but denies you the control to meet those demands.  In a ROWE, there are still high demands, but there is also high control.  Life is hectic but manageable. We’ve heard the following comments from ROWE employees:

• “It makes a big difference to be on the phone with the doctor scheduling an appointment and just be able to take the first time they offer, instead of trying in vain to find something before 8:30 or after 4:30.”
• “My sister is flying into town tomorrow and she asked me if I could pick her up at the airport at 1:30.  I was able to say “yes” without even thinking because I have that ability now.”
• “My husband called to see if I could have lunch and we did.  I never once looked at my watch - I was able to just enjoy our time together without feeling stressed out about being back to the office in an hour.”
• “I do all my grocery shopping on Wednesday mornings now - and no one’s there!  I zoom up and down the aisles and don’t have to worry about pushing through all the carts on a Saturday or Sunday.”
• “I can finally show my son what it’s like to live spontaneously and make a living at the same time.  We can do fun things anytime, not just on weekends - and that’s how life should be.”
• “I used to never feel like I could take part in [my local community organization] because I never knew when I’d get the time off to do my part.  Now I’m able to contribute all the time and that makes me feel more human.”

High demands, high control - that’s what it’s all about.

Which area of your life do you feel the most demands on your time and the least amount of control on managing that time?

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Event news: CultureRx will be speaking about ROWE at an event hosted by FlexWork Connection, Career Partners and YourOnRamp on Oct. 16.  The event will be held at UC Irving: The Merage School of Business.  Get more information and register here.

We need to make a statement: Right now, on Sept. 22, 2008, we have perfected ROWE for office environments.  Big, small, mid-sized - if you’re in an office, the process for migrating to a ROWE has been proven and is ready for you.  We have not experimented in any other environments yet (research into the health care industry begins in 2009 - stay tuned).

We presented at the Twin Cities HR Executive Forum last week.  The group was lively and very fun (could have been that they were eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping wine during the presentation).  When it came time for Q&A, the most popular ROWE question revealed itself as Question #1 for the 23,456th time: “It sounds like ROWE would be great for offices, but have you done this yet for store environments?”

For the previous 23,455 times, insert any of the following for “store environments”: manufacturing, hospitals, bus drivers, teachers, zoos, sports associations, freight services, broadcasting, pilots and flight attendants, or restaurants.

In fact, we began a recent speaking engagement by specifically saying that we have not experimented with ROWE outside the office setting.  What was the first question?  “So how does ROWE work in a manufacturing setting?”

We recognize that there are other environments that suck just as much as offices.  It is our strong belief that there are foundational elements of the office ROWE that can translate into other environments - trust, schedule control, and elimination of Sludge are a few.  And just because we haven’t tested ROWE in those environments doesn’t mean you can’t try some of these things…if you’re read Why Work Sucks and you have ideas for how to improve your manufacturing or retail environment, for example, go for it.  We’d love to hear about it - and so would other readers in your industry!

Now for the contest: This is a call for the most insanely non-ROWE policy you can find in your Employee Handbook.  Policies like these (taken from a Fortune 1000 medical diagnostics company):

1. Hours of Work - The Company’s normal workweek is Monday through Friday.  Work days are eight hours each.  Nonstandard workweeks exist for some positions and departments.
2. Rest Periods - There are two scheduled ten-minute rest periods during each eight-hour work shift - the first approximately two hours after the beginning of the shift and the second approximately two hours after the lunch period.  Your supervisor will inform you about the rest period schedule in your area.

Post your policy in the Comments and the winner will receive a signed copy of Why Work Sucks and a Work Sucks bumper magnet.  Go for it - wipe the dust off that Handbook and start searching!

We promised things would get better for Tim and Kara, and they do.

In our fantasy world, all of you that have read Why Work Sucks would give it to your managers, and they would read it and immediately fall in love with ROWE.  It’s good to have fantasies, right?

Tim’s story is an example of the reality that some, or many of you, may be facing.  You’ll see in today’s videos that Tim ended up reaching a point where he talked about ROWE with his manager and CFO, and stated that he needed to be evaluated on his results, not the amount of face-time he put in at the office.  Tim’s higher-ups responded with “ROWE is a great idea, but it won’t work here.”  Despite this, things have become better for Tim since he voiced his unhappiness and talked about the kind of work environment he needed.  He does think that management heard what he said, and although they won’t become a full-fledged ROWE, he’s happy he stood up to the status quo.

Kara, too, is happy - she has her husband back.  The kids have their father back.  After reading Why Work Sucks, Tim made the decision to draw the line on what he’ll accept in a work environment and what he will reject.

Ultimately, ROWE starts with you.  It takes a lot of courage to do what Tim did, and it’s a decision we all have to make…continue to be eaten alive by the status quo or stand up for a better way.

Video #1: Tim stands up

Video #2: Tim’s words of inspiration

Video #3: Kara sees change

This installment of “People on the Street” involves a husband and wife: Tim and Kara.  We’ve learned from experience that when someone thinks their work sucks, it doesn’t just affect them - it affects people around them, too.  With that in mind, in this post, you’ll hear Tim’s account of his entry into a new work environment and how the focus on time progressively became too much to handle.  You’ll also hear Kara’s account of what she was witnessing as Tim became more and more dissatisfied.

In Part 2 on Friday, you’ll hear how reading Why Work Sucks affected Tim and Kara’s life and the life of their family.

Video #1: Tim’s new job

[About five months ago, Tim got a new job.  Shortly after entering the work environment, he was reprimanded for coming in 2 minutes "late" and leaving 2 minutes "early". He was also "checked on" by his boss no less than 12 times a day.  And the stress level began to rise...]

Video #2: Tim: My work sucks

[Tim went to HR to express his unhappiness and was told to go back to the grind.  He continued to be reprimanded for how he used his time - to the point of feeling guilty about going to the bathroom.]

Video #3: Kara’s view of Tim

[Immediately after the new job started, Kara noticed that the Tim she knew was slipping away.  He was withdrawn, crabby, cold, and short-tempered.]

When you’re in a less than stellar work situation, how do your relatives/friends perceive you?  Or, if you have a relative or friend in a stressful work situation, how have you seen them change?

It gets better for Tim and Kara - we promise.  Stay tuned for Part 2…