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ROWE and the Awesomeness Manifesto

Nov 30, 2009 » by Cali & Jody

We stumbled across this blog post about awesomeness on Harvard Business Publishing’s site. The author, Umair Haque, is out to debunk the old myths about the importance of innovation. What he’s calling for is more awesomeness:

Ethical production

Not just making stuff, but making stuff in an ethical, humane way

Insanely great stuff

Not just going through the motions, but executing in a way that taps into your creativity and connects on an emotional level

Love

Not just getting through the day, but engaging your whole person in order to bring out your best

Thick value

Not just executing the task at hand, but going deep in order to bring out the biggest long-term benefit for your customers and your company

We’d argue that this kind of excellence isn’t impossible in a traditional work environment, but it’s harder.

An ethical company is ethical from the bottom to the top. It maintains its ethics because accountability runs in both directions. The command-and-control model creates an “it’s not my job” mentality that makes it easier for silos of bad behavior to form and thrive.

Traditional work environments can create insanely great stuff, but it’s usually in spite of management. You can’t order someone to be creative. You can’t dictate emotional engagement.

The same goes for love. How much room is there for love in a workplace that treats you like a child if you come in at 8:15 a.m. instead of 8:00 a.m.?

But it’s that “thick value” that is hardest to achieve in a traditional workplace. As we’ve said before, one of the primary jobs of a traditional workplace is to enforce the rules of a traditional workplace.

In a traditional workplace, an enormous amount of energy goes into keeping everyone in line. For a lot of people, it’s not until they’re self-employed or in a ROWE that they can even see how much time, effort and (dare we say) passion goes into maintaining the status quo. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to control your employees and get “thick value” out of them.

You have to set them free.

  • Concerned employee

    You just hit the heart of the problem. The amount of effort and resources that go into keeping the status quo is tremendous. Managers consistently manipulate employees like puppetmasters. This creates an uncomfortable, hostile environment. Employees do not excel because they know that at the end of the day, they may or may not receive credit for what they’ve done – depending on how well they’ve played the game. It’s so frustrating for to be enlightend :) To know that ROWE could bring a better environment for managers and employees. Bottom line: the culture has to change.

  • Persephone K

    Brilliant! “You can’t order someone to be creative. You can’t dictate emotional engagement.” Its so true… so simply obvious, yet so frustrating to know that when you say something like this in a traditional environment, you’re viewed as a “slacker” or “uncommitted” or “not dedicated enough.” And at the end of the day, its just a basic truth about humans.

    This post is so timely too. One of the managers I work with (not my direct boss, but close enough) sent one of his many edicts to his team yesterday telling them to be sure to tell him at least 24 hours in advance if they want to take a vacation day, and to email or call him before 8 am if they need to take a sick day. Pure insanity. How can he expect his people to perform at the highest level possible (or even just an average level) if the most important thing is not calling at 8:01 (even when the workday officially starts at 8:15) to tell him you have swine flu?