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 Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson At a time when the President of the Society for Human Resource Management, Laurence G. O’Neil, cautions members that it may no longer be business as usual, a truly audacious idea for organizing, or perhaps disorganizing, work has burst upon the scene.The concept is called Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) and is described in a new book with the provocative title “Work Sucks, and how to fix it.” The idea is simply that employees control when, where, and how long they work, as long as they meet their objectives.
The authors, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, contend that everyone benefits when the focus is changed from hours to outcomes. They aren’t kidding when they say that as long as employees meet their objectives, the way they spend their time is entirely up to them.
Skeptics may think this idea is too radical to work. However it is working at Best Buy where the ideas behind what became known as ROWE were developed starting in 2003. Literally employees are empowered to come and go as they please. In the beginning it probably drove insecure supervisors nuts.
Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, wrote in the forward for the book:
“The trend for successful companies is making them more human, not less human. It wasn’t that long ago that Best Buy was a regional electronics chain. We are now a global company with 140,000 employees. What has allowed this to happen has less to do with what we sell than how we’ve created a distinctly human culture that lets people have fun while working hard, that lets them be themselves, that trusts them to do their jobs.”
Ressler and Thompson are founders of CultureRx, a company that promotes their passionate belief that there is a better way to work. They met at Best Buy, where they pioneered their ideas. They are currently working with five companies including a Fortune 50 company on the West Coast.
Harvard Professor Rakesh Khurana, who teaches a doctoral seminar on management and is an expert on the CEO labor market, writes caustically tha t we should not be surprised at the rise of corporate malfeasance.
He advocates rejuvenating intellectually and morally the training of our future business leaders. Khurana contends that university-based business schools were founded to train a professional class of managers in the mold of doctors and lawyers but have retreated from that goal, leaving a moral hole at the center of business education and perhaps in management itself.
MBA-driven programs, he believes, have a perspective that managers are merely agents of shareholders, beholden only to the cause of share of profits.
The original idea when the managerial elite began working with major universities to establish graduate business education programs paralleling those for medicine and law, constituting business as a profession, ran into problems with codifying the knowledge and developing enforceable standards of conduct.
To deal with these qualification issues in many fields, the law has stepped in. To sell real estate or insurance, or do plumbing and electrical work, it is necessary to meet educational and testing requirements in order to be licensed. Some 50 years ago the public relations field created an accreditation program to add some luster to their endeavors.
To some in the hierarchy of the business world the idea of professional standards for executives might seem impractical or even inimical to free enterprise, but continued debate on this subject can be expected.
While corporate executives struggle with a recession-induced miasma of layoffs, plant closings, inventory reductions and balance sheet issues, there is a soft drumbeat in the background that is hazardous to ignore.
Jack and Suzy Welch, in their regular column in Business Week, put it this way, “throw some time and energy into figuring out what your company’s future could and should look like. When the upturn arrives the business landscape will be brand new. There will be fewer competitors and more opportunity for those companies that are primed to seize it.”
Elsewhere in Business Week there is a story proclaiming that “corporations worldwide are crying out for new thinking.” The issue becomes focused when the need for new leadership is imminent, a common reality since on average CEO tenure is 5-6 years.
The CEO job has been likened to star athletes– high pay and short careers.
A daunting challenge for new CEOs and those aspiring to that pinnacle is to cope with exponential advances in science technology contrasted with the business as usual culture in many if not most businesses.
IBM’s Global Business Services unit, a nearly $20 billion business, arrived at a strategy that is summed up with the statement that it “provides the business expertise to help create a smarter planet.” It includes markets such as complex transportation systems and upgrades of the electric grid.
A subject that keeps coming up in boardrooms is how to inspire innovation at a time when coping with recession has top of mind attention. Judy Estrin, in her new book Closing the Innovation Gap, states flatly:
“America has lost the core values that were the catalyst of its success. We can-and must-regain our momentum, adapt to a new reality, and restore our culture of innovation and commitment to science at all levels of society.
She added somberly, “If we do not, we will lose our position of strength, and with it our hopes for ongoing prosperity and enhanced quality of life for our children and grandchildren.”
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