Posts Tagged ‘rowe’

Who Is Using ROWE?

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

The nice folks over at CultureRx have released a partial list of organizations who are employing ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) in their workplace beyond Best Buy Corporate and J.A. Counter & Associates. So, without further delay…

Yum Brands : Yum! Brands, Inc., based in Louisville, Ky., is the world’s largest restaurant company in terms of system restaurants with more than 35,000 restaurants in more than 110 countries and territories. Four of our restaurant brands – KFC, Long John Silver’s, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell – are the global leaders of the chicken, quick-service seafood, pizza and Mexican-style food categories. A&W Restaurants is the longest running quick-service franchise chain in America. In 2007, Yum! Brands generated more than $10 billion in total revenues, including company sales and franchise fees.

SpinWeb : SpinWeb is a Web Marketing & Brand Development Agency. Our philosophy is that of taking a holistic approach to caring for our clients and their Internet and Brand strategies.

Dixie Iron Works : Dixie Iron Works, a privately held business, began as a small oilfield machine shop in Longview, Texas in 1933. Mr. Frank W. Ussery, the original owner, moved the company to South Texas in 1939 and Dixie has been at the same location for over 60 years. The company rapidly grew into the very best oilfield repair machine shop in South Texas and by 1974 its capabilities and skilled craftsmen were known and respected all over the Southwest.

Brighton Bancorp : Brighton Bank is your local neighborhood community bank. We would like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves to you and to outline some of the full service banking products we currently offer in meeting all your bank related needs and services. Providing quality products and services through the years has enabled the bank to grow and expand. Since late 1997 we have opened full service branches in Memphis and Covington to better serve the increasing customer needs and market place.

South Metro Human Services : South Metro Human Services is a non-profit agency serving adults with mental illness and/or chemical dependence in the Twin Cities metro area.

Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council : Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council is one of over three hundred councils chartered by Girl Scouts of the USA to provide the Girl Scout program in our jurisdiction. With an area covering all of Riverside County and most of San Bernardino County, we serve nearly 15,000 girl members and more than 5,000 adult volunteer members, both women and men. Our membership represents the diverse cultures of our region and reflects our goal to provide a meaningful, relevant program to the members we serve.

Source: http://caliandjody.com/blog/2008/11/17/the-rowe-list/

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Does ROWE Really Work?

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

What is ROWE?

ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment): ROWE in practice means “each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want as long as the work gets done.” Employees control their own calendars, and are not required to be in the office if they can complete their tasks elsewhere. It is generally accepted that there are times when collocation will be necessary. Under normal circumstances, work when and where you like.

Who is using ROWE?

The most widely known adopter is none other than Best Buy. Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, agreed with the work culture change so much that he wrote the forward to the CultureRx book entitled, “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It”. Finding additional companies using ROWE is a bit harder. I have made inquiries to get more examples that will be shared when they become available. A company that I work for has implemented a version of ROWE in the Information Services department. I would estimate that over 75 people participate in the ongoing program.

UPDATE: I’ve gotten in touch with Cali and Jodi, the originators of ROWE, and they have informed me that J.A. Counter & Associates are another company that uses ROWE. A larger list of organizations are due to be published within a month’s time. So, expect further updates when the info is released.

So, Does It Work?

Short answer: yes. We have employed ROWE for well over a year. Employee satisfaction has increased an order of magnitude. That said, ROWE is not a cure all. You will still find many annoying drawbacks that plague most organizations. How to address them may well lay outside of the issues ROWE addresses. Employees truly love the benefits that ROWE does provide.

Stumbling Blocks

  • Abusers. These are in the extreme minority. Fear not. Their performance will be the tell-tale that exposes abuse of the ROWE system. Afterall, if the results based on performance are poor and the excuses many, it will quickly become apparent that the individual is not playing by the rules. Solution? Temporarily revoke those ROWE rights. You’ll be amazed at just how quickly performance improves to win back ROWE privileges.
  • Reduced osmotic communication. I talked at length about this in another article. It is a real issue. The benefits FAR outweigh the introduction of this problem. Solution? Find tools that emulate osmotic communication and fit into your company’s way of doing business.
  • The death of camaraderie. Well, sort of. Nobody likes fabricated situations. Isn’t it awkward when the company forces people without a mutual social interest to participate in personal and social team building exercises? Yes. Yes, it is. Solution? People who genuinely like one another will naturally gravitate. With ROWE, this often takes the form of coffee shop sit-ins, living room office parties and the infamous happy hours. Be sure to have the occasional meeting so that new employees meet existing ones and new relationships can be formed face-to-face.
  • The work/home blur. This does seem to occur occasionally. If you are working at strange hours, there are times when it is hard to differentiate between the two. The clear separation becomes a little vague. Solution? Managers are warned not to take advantage of this. Let your employees live their lives. Employees should expect that their companies may contact them during normal business hours and that they should respond during those hours.
  • Manager fear. The irrational belief by managers that they will no longer be needed. Especially troublesome to the micro manager whose personality traits desire control. Solution? Educate. Managers will find that coordination is still greatly needed in a ROWE enabled workforce. Relax and let go. Managers who trust their direct reports will always get better results than those who do not.

Benefits

  • Productivity increases. People using ROWE got more done in less time.
  • Goodbye, commute.
  • More time dedicated to personal life. This is healthy. This brings joy. Happy employees are productive. Productivity increases. And so forth…
  • Employee retention. ROWE is hard to give up once you’ve experienced it. Employees have a tendency to stay put.

Conclusion

If there are segments of your workforce that are candidates for ROWE, you owe it to yourself (and them!) to seriously consider making the change. The employee satisfaction and increased productivity are reason enough to make a trial run at the minimum. ROWE pays dividends and costs organizations very little to implement.

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Osmotic Communication under ROWE

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

I know; it sounds like the basis for a thesis. Not to worry. We’ll keep it lite. Let’s begin by agreeing to a common understanding for the terms being thrown about like so much bathe water.

  • Osmotic Comunication: “Osmotic communication means that information flows into the background hearing of members of the team, so that they pick up relevant information as though by osmosis. This is normally accomplished by seating them in the same room. Then, when one person asks a question, others in the room can either tune in or tune out, contributing to the discussion or continuing with their work.” From Crystal Clear by Alistair Cockburn of Agile software development fame.
  • ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment): ROWE in practice means “each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want as long as the work gets done.” Employees control their own calendars, and are not required to be in the office if they can complete their tasks elsewhere. It is generally accepted that there are times when collocation will be necessary. Under normal circumstances, work when and where you like.

Software As A Solution

Chris Spagnuolo’s Edgehopper provided some recommended software tools for distributed teams. These are certainly useful and a good starting place but are they applicable to osmotic knowledge sharing? On the surface it seems as though osmotic communication in a remote work environment is an impossibility. In the strictest of terms, this is true. But if we loosen out grip on semantics just a little, perhaps we’ll find that there are ways to rub elbows at the office although geographically being worlds apart.

Instant Messaging / Chat

My initial research has revealed that many IT shops are using chat rooms as a means to try to replicate ‘office chatter’. For this to be effective, participants must all sign into a single chat room where all the members have simultaneous sessions. The solution requires that general discussion take place in that chat room. In this way they can ‘overhear’ one another’s discussions and perhaps absorb information osmotically. Seems reasonable. It is true that a person can’t see every bit of chat that scrolls past the screen. But, neither can they overhear every discussion at the office. A chat client will allow for paging back and seeing earlier talk; something not possible with the immediacy of verbal conversation.

Web Conferencing / VOIP

For those considering this route, I have a couple of suggestions. On the commercial side (and if your company has some $$$ to spend), check out Microsoft Office Communicator. It integrates with many other Office products and works very well as a general chat communication tool. For a much more robust and feature-rich platform, consider Cisco Unified MeetingPlace. MeetingPlace may be overkill for some organizations as it provides webex, telecom/voip and video functionality. It also does provide chat, shared whiteboards/applications and more. Communicator and MeetingPlace are in no way mutually exclusive. Each product lends itself to the strengths of their respective companies.

Wikis / Sharepoint

I’m not a big proponent of these type products as a communication tool. This is especially true of osmotic communication. While the content is coming from the users themselves, there is a reliance on the users to visit the websites and find the latest updates. There is no subscription model (i.e. push). Sharepoint has a completely unintuitive interface. If your going to ask developers to keep information current, you better make it REAL easy otherwise it’s just not going to happen. If you must, check out mindtouch wiki software. It is the best I’ve seen to date and pushes the boundaries of what wiki software is expected to offer.

Forums / Blogs

Yes, please. These days there is very little difference between forum and blogging software. Modern versions have categories, subcategories, topics, threaded discussion/comments, search and so forth. Perhaps most important are the ease-of-use and subscription services. I can’t stress this enough. Developers are very busy people! Make it simple for information to be added. Make it automatic for information to be consumed. I’m interested to find digesting features for these tools. Perhaps a weekly update email with a digest of new items and updates.

Not Quite the Real Thing

Have we accomplished osmotic communication? No. But perhaps we’ve identified some tools that provide a common ground. Ultimately, the goal is to stay informed while keeping it simple and natural. I’d be glad to hear of other software that is being used to fill this void like Mind Mapping software as an example.

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