Results Only Work Environment

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pages: 320 words: 86,372

Mythology of Work: How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself by Peter Fleming

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 1960s counterculture, anti-work, antiwork, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon tax, clockwatching, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, David Graeber, death from overwork, Etonian, future of work, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, illegal immigration, Kitchen Debate, late capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, means of production, neoliberal agenda, Parkinson's law, post-industrial society, post-work, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, Results Only Work Environment, scientific management, shareholder value, social intelligence, stock buybacks, The Chicago School, transaction costs, wealth creators, working poor

Many occupations increasingly require workers to evoke their entire and unscripted personalities on the job, ‘warts and all’. As a result, the rigid nine-to-five confines of the typical office have been replaced by flexitime, aided by technology, in which tasks can be achieved in unconventional times and places. Using terms like ‘liberation management’ and ‘results-only work environment’ (ROWE), some overly optimistic observers have insisted that firms have shed their old ‘control mentality’ (Semler, 2007), persuading employees to bring their self-fashioned artisanal interests to the job – skills that are often difficult to cultivate through standard management methods.

Whereas workers in Taylorized industries became optimal only after they had been deprived of practical knowledge, skills and habits developed by the culture of everyday life … post-Fordist workers have to come to the production process with all the cultural baggage they have acquired through games, team sports, arguments … (Gorz, 2010: 9–10) ‘Life itself’ now enters the neoliberal machine, since our independent and socially rich abilities typically expressed outside the workplace become a principal resource. This has been facilitated by some work systems that would have looked bizarre in earlier organizational contexts. For example, in their bestselling book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, Ressler and Thompson (2011) argue that American industry is being substantially reshaped by results-only work environments. Such organizations no longer focus on inputs, as conventional management wisdom prescribes, but only on outputs. ROWE-orientated firms do not give a shit where, when or how the work is done, whether it’s on a Sunday morning, or enclosed in an airport’s toilet cubicle with iPhone conveniently at hand.

capitalism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 General Motors plant (Michigan) ref1 Goffee, R. ref1 Goldman Sachs ref1 The Good Soldier Svejk (Hasek) ref1 Gordon, D. ref1 Gorz, A. ref1, ref2 Graeber, D. ref1 Groundhog Day (Ramis) ref1 Guattari, F. ref1, ref2, ref3 on criticism/criticality ref1 and de-subjectification ref1 language ref1, ref2 Gujarat NRE ref1 Gulf of Mexico oil spill (2010) ref1 Hamper, B. ref1 Hanlon, G. ref1 Hardt, M. ref1 Hart, A. ref1 Harvard Business Review (HBR) ref1 Harvey, D. ref1, ref2 Hayek, F. ref1, ref2, ref3 health and safety ref1, ref2 ‘Help to Buy’ support scheme ref1 Hirschhorn, N. ref1 Hodgkinson, T. ref1 holiday policy ref1 Houellebecq, Michel ref1, ref2, ref3 human capital ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 human relations movement ref1 Human Resource Management (HRM) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 humour ref1 ‘I, Job’ function ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and biopower ref1, ref2 and death drive ref1, ref2 as escape into work ref1 and illness ref1, ref2, ref3 resisting ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 see also escape; totality refusal see also work, as all-encompassing; working hours illegal immigrants, deportations ref1 illness ref1, ref2 collective ref1, ref2 see also Social Patients’ Collective as desirable experience ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 of managers ref1, ref2 and productive power ref1, ref2 as weapon against capitalism ref1 ‘immersion room’ exercise ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 imperceptibility ref1 see also invisibility incentivization ref1 indexation process ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 informality and authoritarianism ref1, ref2 see also deformalization insecurity ref1 Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) ref1, ref2, ref3 invisibility ref1, ref2 ‘Invisible Committee’ ref1, ref2 Italian autonomist thought ref1, ref2 Jameson, F. ref1 Jones, G. ref1 Junjie, Li ref1 Kamp, A. ref1 Kein Mensch ist illegal ref1 Kellaway, L. ref1 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) ref1 Keynes, J.M. ref1, ref2 Khrushchev, Nikita ref1, ref2 Kim, Jonathan ref1 King, Stephen ref1 ‘Kitchen Debate’ ref1 Kramer, M. ref1, ref2 labour unions ref1 dissolution of ref1, ref2 language, evolution of ref1 Larkin, P. ref1 Latour, B. ref1, ref2 Laval, C. ref1, ref2 Lazzarato, M. ref1, ref2 leaders backgrounds ref1 remuneration and bonuses ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 see also managers Lefebvre, H. ref1 Leidner, R. ref1 Lewin, D. ref1 liberation management ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 life itself, enlisting ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 lines of flight ref1, ref2 Lordon, F. ref1, ref2, ref3 Lucas, R. ref1, ref2 Lukács, G. ref1 Lynch, R. ref1 McChesney, R. ref1 McGregor, D. ref1 management ref1, ref2 and class function ref1, ref2 as co-ordination ref1 and inducement of willing obedience ref1, ref2 information deficit ref1 and power ref1, ref2 self-justification rituals ref1 as transferable skill ref1, ref2 managerialism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and abandonment ideology ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 and boundary management ref1 and conflict-seeking behaviour ref1 division between managers and managed ref1, ref2 general principles of ref1 and leadership ref1 profligate management function ref1 refusing ref1 and securitization ref1 as self-referential abstraction ref1 managers as abandonment enablers ref1, ref2 and deformalization ref1 and engagement of workers ref1, ref2 lack of practical experience ref1 overwork ref1, ref2 see also leaders Marcuse, H. ref1 Market Basket supermarket chain ref1 Marx, K. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Maslow, A. ref1 Matten, D. ref1 meat consumption ref1 Meek, J. ref1 Meyerson, D. ref1 Michelli, J. ref1 Miller, W.I. ref1 Mitchell, David ref1 mobile technology ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Modafinil ref1, ref2 Monaghan, A. ref1 money ref1, ref2 see also accumulation Mooney, G. ref1 Moore, A.E. ref1 Moore, Michael ref1, ref2 music industry ref1 Naidoo, Kumi ref1 NASA ref1 Natali, Vincenzo ref1 Negri, A. ref1, ref2 neoliberal capitalism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and bureaucracy ref1 and ideal worker ref1, ref2 and non-work time ref1, ref2 and paranoia ref1, ref2 resisting ref1, ref2 see also post-labour strategy and threat of abandonment ref1, ref2 and truth telling ref1, ref2, ref3 neoliberalism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and class relations ref1, ref2, ref3 and disciplinary power ref1 and human-capital theory ref1 and impossibility ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and micro-fascism ref1 and reign of technocrats ref1 role of state ref1 and truth telling ref1, ref2 and worker engagement ref1, ref2, ref3 Nestlé ref1 New Public Management ref1, ref2 New Zealand, and capitalist deregulation ref1 New Zealand Oil and Gas (NZOG) ref1 Newman, Maurice ref1 Nietzsche, Friedrich ref1, ref2 Nixon, Richard ref1, ref2 Nyhan, B. ref1 obsession ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Onionhead program ref1 overcoding ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 The Pain Journal (Flanagan) ref1, ref2, ref3 paranoia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 overwork/paranoia complex ref1, ref2 Paris Commune ref1, ref2 Parkinson’s Law ref1 Parnet, C. ref1 Parsons, T. ref1 Peep Show (TV comedy) ref1 pensions ref1, ref2 personnel management ref1 see also Human Resource Management Peters, T. ref1 Philip Morris ref1 Pike River Coal mine (New Zealand) ref1 Pollack, Sydney ref1 Pook, L. ref1 Porter, M. ref1, ref2 post-labour strategy, recommendations ref1 postmodernism ref1, ref2, ref3 power ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 and truth telling ref1 Prasad, M. ref1 Price, S. ref1 private companies, transferring to public hands ref1 privatization ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 profit maximization ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 quantitative easing ref1 Rand, Ayn ref1 rationalization ref1, ref2, ref3 Reifler, J. ref1 reserve army of the unemployed ref1 Ressler, C. ref1 results-only work environment (ROWE) ref1, ref2, ref3 Rimbaud, A. ref1 Rio+20 Earth Summit (2012) ref1 ‘riot grrrl’ bands ref1 rituals of truth and reconciliation ref1 Roberts, J. ref1 Roger Award ref1 Roger and Me (Moore) ref1 Rosenblatt, R. ref1 Ross, A. ref1, ref2 Ross, K. ref1 Rudd, Kevin ref1 ruling class fear of work-free world ref1, ref2 and paranoia ref1, ref2 Sade, Marquis de ref1 Sallaz, J. ref1 Saurashtra Fuels ref1 Scarry, E. ref1 Securicor (G4S) ref1 Segarra, Carmen ref1 self-abnegation ref1 self-employment ref1 self-management ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 self-preservation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 self-sufficiency ref1, ref2, ref3 shareholder capitalism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 shift work ref1, ref2 see also working hours Shragai, N. ref1 sleep and circadian rhythms ref1 as form of resistance ref1 working in ref1, ref2, ref3 smart drugs ref1, ref2 Smith, Roger ref1 smoking and addiction ref1 dangers of ref1, ref2 scientific research ref1 sociability ref1, ref2 ‘the social’ ref1, ref2 social factory ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 and structure of work ref1 social media ref1 Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission ref1 Social Patients’ Collective (SPK) ref1, ref2, ref3 social surplus (commons) ref1, ref2, ref3 socialism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Sontag, S. ref1 Spicer, A. ref1 stakeholder management ref1, ref2 Starbucks ref1 state, theory of ref1 subcontracting ref1, ref2, ref3 subsidization ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 suicide as act of refusal ref1 Freud’s definition ref1 work-related ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 surplus labour ref1, ref2 surplus living wage ref1 ‘tagged’ employees ref1 ‘tagged’ prisoner ref1 Tally, Richard ref1 taxation ref1, ref2, ref3 Taylor, F.W. ref1 Taylor, S. ref1 Taylorism ref1 technological progress, and emancipation from labour ref1 Thatcher, Margaret ref1 Thatcherism ref1 They Shoot Horses Don’t They?


pages: 204 words: 54,395

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, behavioural economics, call centre, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dean Kamen, deliberate practice, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, functional fixedness, game design, George Akerlof, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, performance metric, profit maximization, profit motive, Results Only Work Environment, scientific management, side project, TED Talk, the built environment, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, zero-sum game

Already, a few law firms are moving in this new, more Type I direction charging a flat rate rather than a time-based fee with the presiding partner of one of New York's leading law firms recently declaring, This is the time to get rid of the billable hour. If the billable hour has an antithesis, it's the results-only work environment of the kind that Jeff Gunther has introduced at his companies. The first large company to go ROWE was Best Buy not in its stores, but in its corporate offices. Like 3M's 15 percent time, Best Buy's ROWE experiment began as something of a rogue project launched by Ressler and Thompson, whom I mentioned earlier and who have since become ROWE gurus, taking their message of autonomy around the world.

CALI RESSLER AND JODY THOMPSON Who: These two former human resources professionals at Best Buy persuaded their CEO to experiment with a radical new approach to organizing work. They wrote a book about their experiences, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It , and now run their own consultancy. Big Idea: The results-only work environment. ROWE, described in Chapter 4, affords employees complete autonomy over when, where, and how they do their work. The only thing that matters is results. Type I Insight: Among the basic tenets of ROWE: People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer's time, or their company's time.

Today, if you're not doing this sort of work, you won't be doing what you're doing much longer. Now that rewards: Rewards offered after a task has been completed as in Now that you've done such a great job, let's acknowledge the achievement. Now that rewards, while tricky, are less perilous for nonroutine tasks than if-then rewards. Results-only work environment (ROWE): The brainchild of two American consultants, a ROWE is a workplace in which employees don't have schedules. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time or any time. They just have to get their work done. Routine work: Work that can be reduced to a script, a spec sheet, a formula, or a set of instructions.


pages: 407 words: 103,501

The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Netwo Rking by Mark Bauerlein

Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, business cycle, centre right, citizen journalism, collaborative editing, computer age, computer vision, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, digital divide, disintermediation, folksonomy, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Future Shock, Hacker News, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telephone, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, late fees, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, meta-analysis, moral panic, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, PageRank, PalmPilot, peer-to-peer, pets.com, radical decentralization, Results Only Work Environment, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, search engine result page, semantic web, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technology bubble, Ted Nelson, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thorstein Veblen, web application, Yochai Benkler

., and Pong (video game) Portraits Post-Gutenberg economics Postman, Neil Post-traumatic dissociative disorders PowerPoint Prensky, Marc The Principles of Scientific Management (Taylor) Printing press Privacy Procter & Gamble Producer public Progressive Group of Insurance Companies Project Muse Protean self The Protean Self (Lifton) Proust, Marcel Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (Wolf) Psychoanalysis schools Ptolemy Publishing Purohit, Sanjay Python Quake (video game) Ranadive, Vivek Rather, Dan Raymond, Eric RAZR phone Reading brain and deep expert Internet use and teenagers’ skills at time spend in Web use skills and Real-time feedback loops Real-time search Real World (television series) Reason Foundation Reflection Reformation Reintermediation Religious fundamentalism Republic (Plato) Research skills, Internet use and Research strategies Results-only work environment (ROWE) Reynolds, Glenn Rheingold, Howard Robinson, Marilynne Rock, Jennifer Romanticism Romantic solitude Rosen, Jay ROWE. See Results-only work environment RSS Rushkoff, Douglas Rutgers University Safire, William Salon.com Samsung San Francisco Chronicle Sanger, Larry SAP Sartre, Jean-Paul Saturated self Saturday Night Live (television series) Scalable Fabric Scarcity Scherf, Steve Schindler’s List (film) Schmidt, Eric Science (journal) Scientific Learning Scientific management Scion Scope Screenagers Scrutiny The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (Battelle) Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Search engines.

While flexible work hours and workplace amenities are routine practice at many high-tech firms, the flexible workplace philosophy is making inroads in other sectors. Best Buy, America’s leading electronics retailer, is trying to revamp its corporate culture to make its workplace more appealing to young employees. The endeavor, called ROWE, for results-only work environment, lets corporate employees do their work anytime, anywhere, as long as they get their work done. “This is like TiVo for your work,” says the program’s cofounder, Jody Thompson.5 By June of 2008, 3,200 of Best Buy’s 4,000 corporate staffers are participating in the ROWE program. The company plans to introduce the program into its stores, something no retailer has tried before.6 There are even signs that more Net Geners will seek to own their own business, especially after they worked for a traditional bureaucratic company for a while.


pages: 197 words: 60,477

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport

adjacent possible, Apple II, bounce rate, business cycle, Byte Shop, Cal Newport, capital controls, clean tech, Community Supported Agriculture, deal flow, deliberate practice, do what you love, financial independence, follow your passion, Frank Gehry, information asymmetry, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge worker, Mason jar, medical residency, new economy, passive income, Paul Terrell, popular electronics, renewable energy credits, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Bolles, Richard Feynman, rolodex, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, web application, winner-take-all economy

In another study, which I found during my own research, giving autonomy to middle school teachers in a struggling school district not only increased the rate at which the teachers were promoted, but also, to the surprise of the researchers, reversed the downward performance trend of their students.2 If you want to observe the power of control up close in the workplace, look toward companies embracing a radical new philosophy called Results-Only Work Environment (or, ROWE, for short). In a ROWE company, all that matters is your results. When you show up to work and when you leave, when you take vacations, and how often you check e-mail are all irrelevant. They leave it to the employee to figure out whatever works best for getting the important things done.

Chapter 8: The Dream-Job Elixir 1. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Hardcover, 2009). 2. DeCharms, “Personal Causation Training in the Schools,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 2, no. 2 (1972): 95–112. 3. “ROWE Business Case,” Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) website, http://gorowe.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/ROWE-Business-Case.pdf. Chapter 11: Avoiding the Control Freaks 1. “Derek Sivers: How to start a movement,” TED.com, video posted online April 2010, http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html.


pages: 223 words: 63,484

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky

centralized clearinghouse, index card, lone genius, market bubble, Merlin Mann, New Journalism, Results Only Work Environment, rolodex, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supply-chain management, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Hsieh, young professional

As leaders, we must create rules and norms for the sake of efficiency rather than as a result of mistrust. We should measure tangible outputs like actions taken and quality of outcomes. Some companies have completely departed from the traditional mind-set that butts-in-chairs equals productivity. Best Buy, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and other major firms have implemented programs like ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), which measures performance based on output rather than sit-put. In a ROWE environment, employees are compensated based on their achievement of specified goals rather than on the number of hours worked. The ultimate goal is to empower employees to make their own decisions about when and where they work as long as mutually agreed-upon goals are achieved.

Tech Portfolio Post-it note Postrel, Virginia Priceline.com Prince-Ramus, Joshua prioritization Darwinian Energy Line and urgent vs. important tasks processing procrastination Procter & Gamble productivity, flexibility and progress project-centric vs. location-centric approaches project management breaking projects into primary elements meetings for plateaus and PSFK.com Publishers Lunch Purple Santa experiment R Randal, Jason RCRD LBL reactionary work flow Rebel Sell, The (Heath and Potter) Reboot Network recognition Red Bull Reed Space References chronological pile for discarding distinguishing Action Steps from filing labeling processing questioning Renoir, Pierre-Auguste responsibility grid restrictions rewards happiness as incremental play as recognition as short-term REX R/GA Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Rodriguez, Diego Rojas, Peter Rothstein, Jesse routines, work ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) Rutterford, Stephen S Sagmeister, Stefan sandbox environments San Francisco Chronicle Sawyer, Keith schedules, work School of Visual Arts Schorr, Max Schwartz, Barry Scientific American Mind self-awareness self-leadership backward clock contrarianism and deviants and entrepreneurship and failure and ambiguity and love and self-awareness in visionary’s narcissism and self-marketing self-reliance serendipity SETI Institute shipping Sisley, Alfred SixDegrees.com skepticism Slate.com social networks social power Southwest Airlines Spaces feature Spear, Josh Spence, Roy Spencer, Percy LeBaron Staple, Jeff Staple Design START/STOP/CONTINUE approach Steinhart Aquarium storytelling Stravinsky, Igor structure change and work routines Stutman, Randall Substance of Style, The (Postrel) Sun Microsystems supply chain management support Sutton, Robert T Tarter, Jill Taylor, James team wikis TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference Texas the99percent.com Thinc Design Thomas, Frank thrashing Threadless 3Com 3M Times Square Total Recall (Bell) Toyota transparency Trickey, Keith Truslow, Sam 21 Dinner Twitter two-minute rule U unique features urgent vs. important tasks V Vans Vimeo visionary’s narcissism visual organization W waiting waiting in line Walker Digital Wal-Mart Washington Post Weblogs, Inc.


pages: 258 words: 74,942

Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business by Paul Jarvis

Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, big-box store, Boeing 747, Cal Newport, call centre, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital nomad, drop ship, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, follow your passion, fulfillment center, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, growth hacking, Inbox Zero, independent contractor, index fund, job automation, Kickstarter, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Naomi Klein, passive investing, Paul Graham, pets.com, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social bookmarking, software as a service, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, uber lyft, web application, William MacAskill, Y Combinator, Y2K

Corporations that excel at creating autonomy for their best employees often empower them to become something like companies of one: these employees work faster and more ingeniously, and they use fewer resources. For example, Google gives its engineers “20 percent time”: they can work on whatever project they want for 20 percent of their time. More than half of the products and projects Google releases were created during this 20 percent time. Other companies set up ROWEs (Results-Only Work Environments), in which employees don’t have set schedules, all meetings are optional, and it’s entirely up to employees how they spend their time working. They can choose to work from home, they can work from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM if it suits them, and they can sculpt their job however they want, as long as the results benefit the company as a whole.

See referrals RedBox, 177 referrals, 109, 149–50, 152–56 relationships, 180–97 authenticity in, 182 building a customer base, 202–7 colleagues and contractors, 194–97 customer retention, 190–94 one-to-many, 126, 129–31 social capital, 187–90 See also customers resilience, 10–14, 53, 57–58, 86 respect, 193 responsiveness. See adaptability Ressler, Cali, 15 retention, customer, 61–63, 106, 185, 190–94 retention, of employees, 6–7 ReWork (Fried), 90 Riley, Pat, 33 risk, 37–40, 221 ROWEs (Results-Only Work Environments), 15, 18 Rubel, Steve, 96–97 Ruby on Rails, 54–55 runway buffer, 211–12 S SaaS, 110, 131 salary, 125, 165, 208, 210–11 SalesForce Pardot, 115 Sandberg, Sheryl, 47 Satornino, Cinthia, 189 savings, 211–12 scalability, 124–34 collaboration, 132–34 communication, 126, 129–31 examples of, 124–27 product development, 127–29 Scarcity (Mullainathan and Shafir), 91 Schachter, Joshua, 20 scheduling, 89–92 scope of influence, 70–73 Sears, 177 self-awareness, 57 selling, 180 Semco Partners, 27 Semler, Ricardo, 27, 219 servant leadership, 48 service, 48, 105–7, 108–11 Seventh Generation, 78–79 Shafir, Eldar, 91 Sharp, 46 Sheldon, Jeff, 115–16, 154, 163–64, 169–70 “shinise”, 216–17 Shopify, 124, 158 Silver, Spencer, 8 simplicity, 20–23, 167–69 single-tasking, 88 Sivers, Derek, 100, 172–73 skills, 51–54 autonomy, 14–18 generalists, 17–18, 200–202 growth, 33 passion, 82, 86 success, 83 slow fashion, 128 small, as goal, 24–44 better vs. bigger, 24–30 career advancement, 70–73 envy, 42–44 growth drawbacks, 30–34 meaningful growth, 60–64 minimum viable profit, 164–66 profit vs. growth, 68–70 risk and, 37–40 vs. traditional approach, 34–40 upper bounds, 40–42 when starting a business, 64–68, 163–74 SmallBizTrends, on referrals, 109 Snapchat, 95 So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Newport), 82 social capital, 187–90 social media brand reputation, 192 mistakes and, 120 personality, 97–99 relationships, 115–16, 188, 189 scalability, 126 viral content, 159–60 social views on business growth, 4–5, 24–25 on leaders, 45–49 on work, 34–40 Socrates, 42 Sorenson, Olav, 171 Southwest Airlines, 40–42 spamvite, 183, 184 specialization, vs. generalist, 51–54 speed, 18–19 Staples, 181 Starbucks, 31–32 starting a business.


pages: 361 words: 76,849

The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun

barriers to entry, Big Tech, blue-collar work, Broken windows theory, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, future of work, Google Hangouts, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Kanban, Lean Startup, lolcat, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, post-work, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Stallman, Seaside, Florida, side project, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the map is not the territory, The Soul of a New Machine, Tony Hsieh, trade route, work culture , zero-sum game

storyId=1067220. 2 A. J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007). 3 The full list of commandments in the Old Testament can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments. 4 Jody Thompson and Cari Ressler proposed a concept called ROWE, or Results Only Work Environment, at Best Buy, and they consult with companies on the concept (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE). However, ROWE was never mentioned once at Automattic. 5 See Alex Williams, “Working Alone, Together,” New York Times, May 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/fashion/solo-workers-bond-at-shared-workspaces.html?

See Team Social meet-up (Portland, Oregon) Power: culture formed by people with; of customer support employees; given individual employees in companies like Automattic; of simple work process Privacy: and customer support work; and public P2s; of Skype chats Problem management: Automattic's procedure for; broken window theory of Problem solving Programmers: importance of; managing, without having programming skills; measuring productivity of; volunteer Projects: avoidance of big/ugly; experiment with, at Budapest company meeting; hardest work at end of; incremental thinking about; lack of support for large Publicize feature Q Quality assurance R Raymond, Eric The Reader Refactoring Remote work. See Working remotely Remy, Martin Ressler, Cari Results: culture emphasizing; judgment of ability determined by Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) Retreats, contrasted to Automattic company meeting Revenue: Automattic cultural aversion to; how WordPress.com makes; Mullenweg's restraint in chasing; WordPress.com store and Roebling, Washington Ross, Hanni Rosso, Sara S Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de San Francisco: author's October visit to; Automattic headquarters in; Automatticians living in; mini-team meet-up in; town hall meeting broadcast from Schedules: of Automatticians; determined by marketing; lack of; spreadsheets for Schneider, Toni: about; co-hosted San Francisco town hall meeting; on continuous deployment; joined as CEO of Automattic; lived in San Francisco; on management as support role; met regularly with Mullenweg; split Automattic employees into teams Scott, Joseph SCRUM Seaside, Florida.


pages: 265 words: 75,202

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, big-box store, Blue Ocean Strategy, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Brooks, do well by doing good, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), fear of failure, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, lockdown, long term incentive plan, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, old-boy network, pension reform, performance metric, popular capitalism, pre–internet, race to the bottom, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, risk/return, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, young professional, zero-sum game

I found out that on any given day, between a fifth and a third of people employed at our headquarters were not at the office. In some departments, team meetings were half empty. Best Buy’s corporate employees were allowed to work from wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, as long as they delivered expected results. This was known as ROWE—results only work environment. In February 2013, still early in our turnaround, our executive team fiercely debated whether we should continue with this program. Our CFO Sharon McCollam was dead set against the system, which she believed lowered productivity. Others did not think it was material enough for us to focus on.

., 38 problems with, embracing and improving, 42–44 (see also vulnerability, encouraging) rankings of, 45, 189 self-assessments of, 188–189 strength building and, 190–191 personal experiences, sharing, 147–148, 155–156 Pew Research Center, 28, 240n1 Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 152 Pink, Daniel, 126, 167 Pliner, Eric, 46–47, 157–158, 170–171 Polgar, Alfred, 238n13 Polman, Paul, 89 Porter, Michael, 218 productivity, 15, 16, 17, 185 profits corporate blind pursuit of, 4, 6, 61, 183 dangers of singular focus on, 57–59 employee engagement and, 15, 17, 57, 61–62 healthy approach to, 62 as misleading measure of economic performance, 56–57 as outcome of excellence, 64, 68, 73–74 scandals due to excessive focus on, 59 shareholder value and, 6, 51, 54–62, 63–65, 74, 192 stakeholders antagonized by singular focus on, 59–61 PTC, 57 Publicis, 111 Puerto Rican hurricane relief, 138–140 purpose of business, 4–5, 6–7, 51, 63–65, 233 (see also purposeful human organizations) discovery of personal, 29–32, 30f employees driven by, 32–34, 61–62, 65–68, 66f, 74, 133–145 framing in meaningful, human, and authentic way, 142–144 growth tied to, 203–204 of incentives, 129–131 leader’s clarity of, 222–223 “noble purpose,” 6, 66–71, 66f, 75, 79–95, 135, 203, 233 shareholder value maximization as, fallacy of, 6, 51, 54–62, 63–65 of work, 11, 23–28, 31, 32–35 purposeful human organizations active engagement with purpose in, 79–95 aspirational goals and vision in, 70 capitalism reinvention by, 62, 65, 73, 74–77 community support and connections in, 68, 72, 88–91 customer delight as goal of, 83–85 customer loyalty to, 64, 67–68, 71–72, 74 employees driven by purpose in, 61–62, 65–68, 66f, 74 environmental and social issues addressed in, 72, 74, 75–76, 88–91, 92, 94 examples of, 72–73 human connections fostered in, 65–77, 66f human magic in (see human magic) inspiration from purpose in, 70–72 interdependence in, 66f, 68 management practices in, 93–95 overview of, 6, 51 profits as outcome of excellence in, 64, 68, 73–74 shareholders rewarded in, 91–92 shareholder value maximization fallacy for, 6, 51, 53–62, 63–65 stakeholders embraced and mobilized in, 82–92 strategy based on purpose in, 66, 74–75, 80–82 supplier and competitor partnerships in, 68, 85–88 turnarounds in, 51, 57, 69, 85, 91–93, 95, 97–117 purposeful leadership articulating principles of, 221 authenticity of, 228–229 clarity of purpose in, 222–223 clarity of role in, 223–224 clarity of service goals in, 224–226 five “Be’s” of, 222–229 overview of, 6, 209 values driving, 218, 226–228 Qwest, 214 racial and ethnic minority employees, 90–91, 152, 159–164 Radio Shack, 2 Radisson Hotels, 41 Ralph Lauren Corporation, 72–73, 89, 143, 202 Rankin, Howard, 162 RASCI (responsible, accountable, supporting, consulted, or merely informed) decision making model, 47, 171–172 rating agencies, calls for action, 235 regulators, calls for action, 235 religion and theology effort vs. outcome focus in, 183–184, 245n3(ch 12) interdependence philosophy echoing, 68 perfection views in, 37–38, 39 purpose discovery using, 29 spirituality as driving force, 138 work views in, 18–19, 24–26, 183, 238n7, 238n11 remote working, 176–177 Rezidor Hotel Group, 199 Rickover, Hyman G., 79 Ritter, Kurt, 199 role modeling, 141 ROWE (results only work environment), 176–177 Sacilor, 213 safety, environment of, 150–151, 153–154, 193, 227–228 Saksena, Asheesh, 197–199 Salesforce, 54, 89–90 Samsung Electronics, 86–87, 196 Samuel (Father), 37–39, 41, 47 Scarlett, Kamy, 144, 147–148, 152, 153, 190 Schmidt, Chris, 184–185, 186 Schulze, Dick, 1–2, 102–104, 110, 123–125 scientific management, 127, 168 Sears, 58 service customer, 14–15, 21, 31, 34 leader’s clarity of goals for, 224–226 purpose tied to, 6, 30–31, 51, 67–68, 69, 75, 242n14 work as opportunity for, 27–28, 238n7 SFR, 57 shareholders business connection to, 68 calls for action for, 235 environmental and social issue importance to, 60–61, 241nn11–12 expectations for businesses, 4 positive environment creation for, 114–115 responsible investments of, 241n11 rewarding, 91–92 shareholder value, 6, 51, 54–62, 63–65, 74, 192 transparency with, 115–116 shareholder value Best Buy’s, 58–59, 61, 192 dangers of singular focus on, 57–59 employee engagement and, 61–62 healthy approach to, 62 maximization of, fallacy of business purpose as, 6, 51, 54–62, 63–65 as misleading measure of economic performance, 56–57 purposeful and human approach improving, 74 scandals due to excessive focus on, 59 stakeholders antagonized by singular focus on, 59–61 Sheth, Jag, 73 Shin, J.


pages: 320 words: 96,006

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin

affirmative action, call centre, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, delayed gratification, edge city, facts on the ground, financial independence, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, job satisfaction, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, Northern Rock, post-work, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, Results Only Work Environment, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Stanford prison experiment, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, union organizing, upwardly mobile, white picket fence, women in the workforce, work culture , young professional

A space has opened up for women—and yes, we are talking mostly about professional women (and men) here—to get creative about how they conduct themselves in the workplace as parents. High-profile companies have begun to adopt radical flexibility programs. Best Buy recently instituted a Results-Only Work Environment for managers and executives, which goes by Silicon Valley rules. As long as you get your work done, you don’t have to show up; you can conduct meetings by cell phone from your fishing boat if you want. The top accounting firms—KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers—are in a PR race to see who can come up with more creative options for flexibility, and now financial firms are joining in, too.

See also Single mothers; Teen pregnancy Ovesey, Lionel, 63 Owen, Karen, 43 OxyContin addiction, 87, 88 Oxygen network, 184 Panama City (Florida), 179 Pandit, Vikram, 205, 206 Pappas, Aggie, 180 Park Chung-hee, 234 Park Geun-hye, 259 Patriarchy, 10, 42, 136, 188, 230 authority in, 58, 62 criminal justice system in, 177 girls’ revenge against, in popular culture, 190 middle class, 80 priesthood model of, 134 in South Korea, 13, 233–35, 259 Patterson, James, 190 Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, 150 People magazine, 12, 30 “People People” study, 135, 137 People skills, 64, 117, 120, 135 PepsiCo, 214 Perhaps Women (Anderson), 128 Pharmaceutical Era, 128 Pharmaceutical industry, 155, 172, 249 Pharmacists, 114–23, 125–41, 157, 284n, 287n Philadelphia, 92–93, 96 Philippines, 256 Piaget, Jean, 63 Pink, 180–81 Pink Brain, Blue Brain (Eliot), 174 Pinker, Steven, 174–75 Plasticity, 263 sexual, 41, 42 Plastic surgery, 239 Plath, Sylvia, 49–50 Playboy Club, 29 Playboy magazine, 60, 65 Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman (Evans), 209 Poisoning, 128, 170–73 Polanski, Roman, 189 Polizzi, Nicole “Snooki,” 178–80 Pornography, 19, 26, 28, 29, 40, 42, 43, 56 Portland (Oregon), 263–64, 268 Portlandia (television show), 264 Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth), 44 Portugal, 237 Practical Academic Cultural Education (PACE), 180–81, 185 Premarital Sex in America (Regnerus), 39 Prentice, Deborah, 186 Pridgen, Abby, 106 Pridgen, Connie, 84–85, 98–102, 106 Pridgen, Rob, 84–85, 98, 110 Princeton University, 86, 185 PricewaterhouseCoopers, 226 Prinz, Jesse, 175 Professions, 22, 57, 149, 225, 239–40, 247 elite, 203, 216 female-dominated, 4–5, 8 male versus female status in, 60, 152, 229 marriage and, 71, 96, 254 See also specific professions Property crimes, 176 Pseudohomosexuality, 63 Psychology Today, 175 Publix grocery chain, 108 Push Comes to Shove (Lavin), 189 PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games Bid Committee, 250–51 Qatar, 151 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 201 Quenching the Father Thirst (Williams), 90 Rah, Theresa, 250–51 Raiders of the Lost Ark (movie), 166 Rape, 182–83, 256 acquaintance, 20 Re-Making Love (Ehrenreich), 41 Real Housewives (television series), 48 Red Families v. Blue Families (Carbone), 88 Redhill, David, 136 Regnerus, Mark, 39 Remington typewriters, 127 Republican Party, 91–92, 149 Results-Only Work Environment, 226 Revolutionary Road (Yates), 64–66 Rice, Condoleezza, 175 Richmond, University of, 145, 146, 158 Riesman, David, 64 Robyn (pop star), 44 Rogge, Jacques, 251 Roiphe, Katie, 67 Role reversals, gender, 137 Ronan, Saoirse, 190 Roosevelt, Franklin, 119 Roth, Philip, 63–64 Routly, Chris, 266 Royal, Ségolène, 30 Russell Afternoon Center for Creative Learning, 111 Russell Corporation, 79–81, 88, 101, 102, 105, 106, 111 Russell Medical Center, 80, 81, 83 Russia, 184 Rust Belt, 87 Rwanda, 259 Safety 2000, 268–70 Saint Agnes Medical Center, 171 Saletan, William, 42 Samsung Electronics, 234 Sandberg, Sheryl, 197, 215, 219, 224–25, 230 San Diego State University, 187 Saudi Arabia, 151 Scarborough, Joe, 214 Scarpace, Katie, 138 Schalet, Amy, 267–68 Schmidt, Eric, 226 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), 147 School, gender differences in success in, 160–67.


pages: 455 words: 133,719

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte

8-hour work day, affirmative action, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, blue-collar work, Burning Man, business cycle, call centre, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, deliberate practice, desegregation, DevOps, East Village, Edward Glaeser, epigenetics, fear of failure, feminist movement, financial independence, game design, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, Great Leap Forward, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, income inequality, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, machine readable, meta-analysis, new economy, profit maximization, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sensible shoes, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, tech worker, TED Talk, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, Zipcar, éminence grise

“Managers are the linchpins to change,” Hammer told me. “They are the ones who really need to get it.” Sludge Eradication NIH researchers also compared workers at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters who worked in an ideal worker corporate culture with those who were part of the company’s new Results Only Work Environment program, or ROWE, designed to give employees radical independence over when, where, and how they worked, as long as they produced quality results on time. Sociologists Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen found that ROWE workers were healthier, felt less stress and anxiety, slept better, had more energy, and reported being more loyal to the company than employees who worked in what Moen calls the “time cages” of traditional workplaces.

• Overwhelm is a product of lack of control and unpredictability and the anxiety that both produce. Learn from workplaces that have creatively embraced a new way of working and a healthier workplace culture. Find what works best for your organization, whether it involves using scheduling software to give hourly workers more say in their work shifts, becoming a results-only work environment with Sludge Eradication sessions, instituting flexibility in time, manner, and place of work, or bounding work time with predictable hours. Use consultants. Use a design firm. Find a way to change. • Know thyself. Even if your workplace culture isn’t about to change, know how you work best.


pages: 243 words: 76,686

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Airbnb, Anthropocene, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Big Tech, Burning Man, collective bargaining, congestion pricing, context collapse, death from overwork, Donald Trump, Filter Bubble, full employment, gentrification, gig economy, Google Earth, Ian Bogost, Internet Archive, James Bridle, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Kickstarter, late capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, Minecraft, Patri Friedman, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, Plato's cave, Port of Oakland, Results Only Work Environment, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skinner box, Snapchat, source of truth, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, union organizing, white flight, Works Progress Administration

Though it finds its baldest expression in things like the Fiverr ads, this phenomenon—of work metastasizing throughout the rest of life—isn’t constrained to the gig economy. I learned this during the few years that I worked in the marketing department of a large clothing brand. The office had instituted something called the Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE, which meant to abolish the eight-hour workday by letting you work whenever from wherever, as long as you got your work done. It sounded noble enough, but there was something in the name that bothered me. After all, what is the E in ROWE? If you could be getting results at the office, in your car, at the store, at home after dinner—aren’t those all then “work environments”?