Authors advocate making ROWE the new status quo

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson want to share with the world that a democratic organization does exist where each person has the power and ability to shape his or her own life through creating a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE).

Co-Authors of the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, the creation of ROWE began as a small experiment at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters in 2003 and has grown to be a global movement.

“We go to work in the information age and yet the workplace has not fundamentally changed since the industrial age,” said Ressler. “We know that there is a better way to work. ROWE has been proven to improve quality of life and business results.”

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson

ROWE gives people choice on when and where to work, as their work is assessed on results, not the number of hours spent in the office.  In work environments that focus only on the results employees feel more ownership for their work and have more control over their lives.

“Each person is free to do whatever they want,” said Thompson. “It’s based on one foundation, which is trust. Give your people clear goals and expectations that they can measure, and then get out of the way and trust they will actually produce the work for you.”

The reality of most work cultures is that people who are not good at their job are promoted because they come in early and stay late, yet people who are good employees are penalized for coming in late. People often measure work through of the hours they put in, rather than the results accomplished.

According to Ressler and Thompson this "game" is played all over the world, even though it doesn’t make sense anymore. Progressive companies that say they have results-driven work cultures are not immune to the outdated work attitudes, the authors note.

Everybody is responsible for changing the foundation of work environments that foster the old attitudes, which includes sludge — the toxic language and judgment re-enforcing the current system where time and physical presence is dominant.

As long as there is sludge the workplace will never be free to reach the goal of what organizational democracy can truly be, the authors note.

“It’s time for people to demand a new way of living and working and no one is going to hand it to us,” said Thompson.

“A democratic organization is one where the employee manual can be summed up in just one sentence; ‘use common sense.’ Relationships are adult-to-adult, not parent-to-child,” said Ressler. “ROWE is the new game; it’s a proven game that creates a pure organizational democracy.”

Ressler and Thompson were among the presenters at WorldBlu LIVE, an organizational democracy conference held in New York City Oct. 16 and 17.

To learn more about ROWE, visit www.culturerx.com.

If you have feedback on this article, please contact the newsroom at 800-294-0051 or e-mail jennifer(at)axiomnews.ca.