6 Figure Career Management

I have today started reading a great new book titled “Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It” by Jody Thomson and Cali Ressler.

It is based around a new working environment implemented by the authors at the Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy.

A culture which helped increase productivity by 35% and reduced voluntary staff turnover by 90%.

What is this new culture? - “ROWE” - Results-Only Work Environment. 

What is a ROWE? Well to quote the authors:

“Within ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. The old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, ‘face time,’ pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.” 

Not that revolutionary you might think. After all, you will hear many of the senior leaders within financial services say similar things: “I don’t care when or how people work, as long as they are delivering the results.” If you lead a team, you may well say the same thing.

But there is a big difference between saying ‘we are only focussed on results, not face time’ and being a ROWE as described in the book.

The reality is that most 6 figure proffessionals reading this post are probably working the traditional Monday to Friday work week and are usually in the office (or with clients) between 8am – 7pm. Many of you are in the office longer than this and some will frequently work weekends too.

But as a knowledge worker, you don’t have to be in the office all those hours in order to deliver the results you are paid to deliver.  Under ROWE, there is much more trust and autonomy to reap the full benefits of being a knowledge worker;

If you want to go and watch a film on Monday afternoon – you do it.

If you want to go and play golf on a sunny Thursday morning – you do it.

If you want to spend a Friday morning running your personal errands - you do it.

No asking for permission or telling people what you are doing. You just do what you like without guilt or worry. You are paid to deliver results and provided you deliver on time, you can manage your time as you see fit. You are an adult and get treated like one.

This is exactly how most of us want to work. With more trust, freedom and indeed the satisfaction that comes from delivering results. Results that are much easier to achieve when you are not attending unproductive meetings or being constantly interupted at your desk by colleagues.

“Well that’s sounds great, but ROWE wouldn’t work in banking” you may well say. “With the timings of the global markets, demanding clients, compliance & risk issues along with service level agreements – this would never work”

That’s a fair point – but only to an extent. Not every aspect of ROWE will work for every division of every financial institution in every financial centre.

But it’s about taking the principles of ROWE and adapting them to your business and work / lifestyle.

So start testing and trialing your own working hours to see how you can transition things in a way that means you don’t have to be in the office 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.

But instead you focus on:

1. Creating value for your employer through the consistent delivery of results.

2. Creating time for you to live a more successful and fulfilling life away from the office (without the guilt)

Funnily enough, when you start achieving 1 and 2, you will then be much better placed to achieve a third element:

3. Create greater financial reward for yourself and your family

Is this something you can go and implement tomorrow?

 No – it’s a transition that takes time. Like any change it’s a journey - but a journey with a prize worth pursuing.

So far I’m really enjoying the book and give it a big thumbs up as it shares some of the philosophies from one of my favourite all time books on work-life balance - The Seven Day Weekend by the eccentric Brazillian CEO Ricardo Semler.

I will talk more about ”Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It“ on the blog in the next couple of weeks once I have read the whole book (I rarely read one book straight through - I’ve got 3 on the go at the moment!).

In the meantime, you can read an interview with the two authors on Tim Ferriss’ blog. There are two separare posts which you can read here and here

So what do you think of ROWE? What are your thoughts on this post? Let me know in the comments box below.