So an esteemed business associate sent me a book last week called Work Sucks and I read the entire book in 24 hours. The premise of the book is that work is something you do instead of a place where you go, and lays out a theory called R.O.W.E (Results Oriented Work Environment). Best Buy has put this practice into action over the last 3 years and it appears to be working. I reached out to a colleague at Best Buy for comment and, according to him, it is very effective and leads to more productive and happy associates.

The way it works is this: In a R.O.W.E there are no set office hours, vacation days or required meetings to attend. Each team member is given clear direction on how they can impact the company and the freedom to complete tasks within a certain window of time. If you don’t complete the work, you are released.

After reading the book, I realized why we haven’t seen something like this before. For it to work, pressure and accountability are placed upon on the leaders to establish and cast a vision to the team in a clear way. In a R.O.W.E. environment, associates are encouraged to challenge their managers when invited to attend meetings in order to make sure the goals of the meeting have an impact on their tasks, and to push back when asked to put out a fire that should have been anticipated by the manager. If you think about it, most managers limit their team’s success because they don’t effectively lead the team.

I bought some copies to share with the Sixthman team last week and we are going to have some conversations about how we can learn from this concept. It will certainly mean that the leaders here will be spending some time looking in the mirror and reflecting as to how we can rise to the challenge of casting a clear vision.

-Andy