«
»

The Fire Is Under Control

Aug 30, 2010 » by Jody

I was doing a session the other day – with OFFICE workers, and someone exclaimed “How would ROWE work for Firefighters?” It made me chuckle. Of course it’s difficult to imagine why firefighters would want to focus on RESULTS.
Results-Only Work Environment is often confused with the Remote-Only Work Environment (companies that have tele-workers may have remote-only workers), but a ROWE is so much different.

Of course, ‘working from home’ doesn’t work for all job tasks. DUH. But focusing on RESULTS does work for all jobs. To hear people say that ROWE doesn’t work for some jobs is simply saying that not everyone should focus on results. And that’s just silly.

Let’s take a look at Firefighters. We learned from a Firefighter in our area that at his fire department there are no schedules (nobody is at the station sitting around waiting for a fire or medical emergency). So, how can we be sure the fire or medical emergency will be handled if all the Firefighters aren’t ‘scheduled’ and are potentially slacking off with family, friends and who knows what?

Here’s how it works. There’s a bunch of Firefighters. Each firefighter has to respond to a minimum of 25% of the calls each month. They can respond to more, but they must do at least 25%. When they choose to respond to a call, their expected response time is 15 minutes.

When a call comes in, every Firefighter in the area has the opportunity to respond. If Firefighter “A” is 100 miles away at a family reunion, he/she doesn’t respond. If on the other hand, Firefighter “A” is nearby and able, they respond. And, if Firefighter “A” is going to a family reunion, he/she doesn’t have to inform all of the other Firefighters.

Now, you might worry that all of the Firefighters will be too far away and unable to respond at the same time, but that NEVER happens.

Why?

When a citizen takes on the responsibility to fight fires and handle emergencies in the community, they are accountable. They understand their objectives. They understand the outcome of their work. And they are trusted to do their part, so they do it. As a team.

There’s no “Frank never responds to calls! He is always too far away” or “Mary is always the last one to respond after midnight. She is so lazy” or “I wish I could come in late everyday”.

The beauty of this is that management doesn’t have to ‘schedule’ people to ensure the job gets done. And the firefighters don’t have to call around and get someone to cover their ‘time’ if something comes up. There’s a job to get done and the team makes it happen.

There is a huge fear out there that people are just basically slackers, and if given the opportunity, wouldn’t do any work for their paycheck. That if we didn’t have a bunch of rules governing how they will work, when they will work and how long they will work, then no work would happen. And it’s that fear that drives all of the silly rules.

How about if we stop protecting the people that are just putting in their time, are good at following all the silly rules and do little or no real work? It’s a small percentage. And everyone knows who they are.

Throw out the rules, get clear on the results, and let the adults that you hire do their jobs. Let them respond to their lives – part of which is work – in a way that makes sense.

Tags: , , ,

  • http://www.ralfw.de Ralf Westphal

    I agree that ROWE too often is mistaken for some “work from home” initiative. Rather it´s a radically different attitude towards work in general – from which might come more time working at home.

    That´s why I like the firefighter example. It moves the focus away from “working at home” to results (putting out a fire).

    Nevertheless the question remains: How does the fire department ensure that there are always enough firefighters around? It might not centrally schedule them anymore. And no one has to ask to be covered, because “covering” means to take over some duty. (But there are no usual duties anymore in ROWE, at least no time/space bound duties; just duties to reach results.)

    I´d say ROWE pushes the scheduling decisions to the firefighters themselves. It decentralizes the scheduling. They need to take up responsibility in their decision to leave town for the weekend etc. They might need to talk to each other to check if not too many of them will be unavailable on a particular holyday.

    And in the end the firefighters themselves might come up with some form of institutionalization of finding out how the coverage can be kept high enough for certain days.

    But that´s perfectly ok, I´d say, because then that is a bottom up development. It springs from necessitiy. It´s purpose is clearly visible. The benefit is obvious. Nobody is wielding “power over” the firefighters. They retain their autonomy within the boundaries of the results to achieve.

    So, I´d say, on the outside a ROWE organization might not even look much different from a non-ROWE organization.

    But if that´s the case then the reason for it looking like it does is completely different. Whatever rules and customs might exist in a ROWE organisation they exists to help getting results while also (!) catering to the autonomy of the employees. And that´s most important.

    -Ralf

  • KellyK

    That’s a fantastic example of ROWE in action.

    My brother-in-law is an EMT, and he, as well as my husband and father-in-law, used to run with a local (volunteer) rescue squad. There were weird issues with the schedule because people were required to take so many shifts a month, and some would sign up for more to go “above and beyond” the bare minimum. Which is all well and good, but that made it tough for people who got to the schedule after them to make their required shifts. Especially people who were still in training as EMTs or ambulance drivers and had only the “observer” slot they could fill.

  • http://blog.conmergence.com Ed Dodds

    Hmmm… my first thought was that rural volunteer fire depts have been ROWE since, well, forever. Tangent: see “San Jose Unified’s online school a first in the Bay Area”. So how do you know that Liberty Online students aren’t spending their days running around the park, or goofing off somewhere else? The answer is, you don’t. But it’s OK to play during the day as long as students do their work. http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_15937948?nclick_check=1

  • Persephone K

    Brilliant! That is a fantastic description of what a ROWE truly can do in all types of work.

    I’m just leaving a massive bureaucracy myself, and my personal opinion is that those silly rules actually develop laziness rather than protect against laziness. People who join mission driven organizations, like Fire Departments, Police agencies, etc, do so to make a difference, but they also tend to join the mother of all bureaucratic systems which are all about creation of rules and rule following. Over time, those motivated, engaged individuals learn that they could do their jobs better, but are rarely allowed to do so, because that would mean going outside of the silly rules box. That’s when burnout sets in, and people find ways to cope with their situation in whatever way possible. Sometimes that manifests itself in appearing like laziness.

    Its so simple… hire good people, trust them to do their jobs, and leave them alone to do so. If they don’t, fire them.

  • Anonymous

      Hello there, simply
    turned into aware of your blog thru Google, and found that it is

    really informative. I?m gonna watch out for brussels.
    I will appreciate if you continue this in future. A lot of other folks will be
    benefited from your writing. Cheers