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3 Unexpected Challenges of Going ROWE

Sep 29, 2010 » by Cali

ROWE is everything I expected it to be and more, including a few things I never anticipated. Going from being a wage slave to having total freedom over my life is an incredible journey, but not without some surprise pitfalls. Here are three personal challenges I was unprepared for when I entered a Results-Only Work Environment.

1. When you are in a ROWE, but the people around you are not, well… things get complicated.

It’s funny. Being in a ROWE when those around you are not becomes an adjustment for everyone. Usually things acclimate in a good way (you should have seen how pleasantly surprised my wife, Angela, was the first time I showed up with coffee at her work…because I could), but not all changes are roses and rainbows. When Michael B., Stacey, and I get together, we often exchange stories of our transition from the traditional work environment to a ROWE. I think we have all shared a version of this story at one time or other:

Being able to work from home is great but the problem is, it does not always look like work. One day, after my first 3 weeks in a ROWE, Angela came home from work (that is, came home from 10 hours at a retail store, dealing with difficult people, and fresh from fighting traffic) to find me sitting on the porch with my laptop, enjoying the sun. She looked at me, a bit incredulously, and said, “This is where you were when I left this morning. Did you happen to clean the dishes or at least get any of the laundry done?”

I looked up, a deer caught in the headlights. “Umm…no,” I said; “I was… working, just like you.” (Well, not JUST like…)

Angela gets it now, of course (and I am free to be much more helpful around the house, by the way), but it was definitely an adjustment for both of us. It can be difficult for people not in a ROWE to wrap their minds around what a Results-Only Work Environment can look like. Sadly, the real subtext to conversations like the one in my story is, “It does not look like you are working… because I know what work looks like, and you do not look like you are suffering…”

2. The only thing that would be better than me being in a ROWE is if the rest of the world were in a ROWE, too.

Living in a Results-Only Work Environment is unbelievably great but sometimes ROWE clashes with the rest of the world (or at least with the parts not yet in a ROWE). I had this fantasy that when I went to a ROWE, I would sleep for a few hours in the middle of the day and a few more in the middle of the night. I would be on the beach every morning and at a jazz club every evening, and in between, I would do work. I was going to stay up until 3am each night and go to bed at 4pm every day… just because I could.

The truth is, sometimes a day actually does look that way, but mostly, the rest of the world is not in a ROWE (yet), which means most interactions happen during their core work hours, not my rock star hours. For example, I can not facilitate a ROWE migration at 4am, because most businesses are not open then. Same for some day-to-day stuff like going to the bank or catching a movie (can’t do either at 3 in the morning).

The world still, generally, operates in an 8am to 5pm mentality.

ROWE is still the greatest thing in the world, though. When I go shopping now, I can shop when there is no line, and I can catch a matinee or midnight show without paying the price for staying up late or coming in late to work. But the thing is, of course, even if I could catch a movie at 3am Tuesday morning, who would I go with?

In other words, until more of us are in a Results-Only Work Environment than not, there are some areas where we are still forced to live in an 8-5 box. I am happy to say, though, those instances are actually few and far between.

3. Sometimes the rest of the world can look very depressing when you are looking from a Results-Only perspective.

This challenge is a bummer to share, but the truth is, I sometimes feel depressed being in a ROWE. I know that seems totally counter-intuitive, but the reason why is because I see the world for its possibilities now instead of for its short-comings.

Now that I know, concretely, what is possible in a legitimate ROWE world, it is like a giant spotlight is shining in all the dark corners where those possibilities are squashed. I see the zombie-faces of check-out clerks, the glaring ineptness of airline travel (NO focus on results there), the breakdown in the education system, and the many ways time is sucked from us because people have to fill work hours with endless, mind-numbing reports and useless data collection. (I mean really, Banks, do your privacy notices have to be 10-pages of mouse-print mailed to me every few weeks? Who had to waste their time writing that rubbish for almost no one to read?) It makes me sad.

Silly stuff like that becomes painfully obvious when you are in a ROWE. All those things existed before, of course, but it was like being a fish in the ocean—it is tough to see the water when you are in it, but when you are looking from outside, the view is quite different.

Anyway, I share these 3 unexpected challenges of going ROWE because I want to prepare you for your migration. Believe me, ROWE is everything you dream it will be, and WAY more; it is even 10 times cooler than whatever you are imagining—I promise. But you will definitely face bizarre challenges and adjustments you might never have considered.

The upshot is… it is totally worth it. The traditional work environment seems a very different, and costly, place now. It may be an old cliché, but the truth is you just can not put a price on Freedom. And if you ask me, we have paid too much already.

Go ROWE!

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  • Brett Legree

    I don’t even work in a ROWE to be honest, just a “normal” company that allows some flexibility, and I agree with you 100 percent.

    From time to time I work from home (I have a good boss) and I’ve experienced #1 personally a few times with my own wife!

    She’ll come home and ask why I didn’t do the laundry!

    (Umm, how much housework did you do today in the office, dear?)

    Then there is the convenience of #2 like you said, it is nice to be able to go and buy groceries for dinner on my “work from home days” before the after work rush. You can see the envy in the employees’ eyes at the grocery store though, like you say in #3… I mean, only old people are supposed to be off during “business hours”!

  • http://www.letsbalancemylife.com Mickael

    I am not in a ROWE and I feel it depressing too! I think it’s more depressing to see the world around from 9 to 5 and being able to be part of it (post office, groceries, banks, …).

    But I see what you mean :)

  • C. A. Hurst

    Hey Michael,

    Great post! Thank you.

    This is not specifically germane to this post, but then again, maybe it is. It’s too good not to share: “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.” – Chinese Proverb

    (Quote posted on Facebook by Alan Froggatt. http://www.facebook.com/#!/alan.t.froggatt?ref=ts)

    • http://michaelsalamey.com Michael Salamey

      Thanks guys!

      C.A. – That is a great quote. Love it!

    • KellyK

      I think that’s relevant to ROWE as a whole, and it’s definitely too good not to share.

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

    As telepresence permeates http://www.nlr.net/release.php?id=73 and tech companies consolidate so that webcams and voip are commonplace maybe stories like http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Work-from-home-to-attract-more-women-from-smaller-cities-into-ITeS/691945/ won’t cause me to say “duh” as often…

    • Cali & Jody

      Hey Ed – we wonder if we say “duh” more often than you do. Could be a tight competition.

  • Nate

    Michael -

    Can you provide any input on the increasing ‘constant connection’ we are moving towards? That is to say, people are so used to immediate responses. So, this could be an immediate response to an e-mail, answering the phone right away, or in worst cases (at least in my opinion) getting pinged via instant message to do something…now…b/c it can’t wait (which usually it can..but that’s not the mentality).

    At any rate, what I’m trying to get it is “how does or can that really change with ROWE?” For example, if you go out to do some grocery shopping at 10am in the morning do people get pissed if they can’t get in touch with you? Obviously this is insane, but that’s how the current work culture is…immediate response. And, as you say, most people still don’t live in a ROWE environment, so I’m wondering what your experience is of creating your own free time separate from work in a world where constant connection and immediate feedback and response are the norm.

    • http://michaelsalamey.com Michael Salamey

      Nate, what a great question! The concept of (immediate) availability is actually part of a larger conversation and training that is exactly why companies call CultureRx to come in and lead their transition to a ROWE.

      To completely answer your question would take more than I can post in a response (and probably more than a couple blog posts); however, I’ll try to give you a taste of how it works. If you have seen the movie, “Avatar” you’ll probably get the gist of this.

      In Avatar, while people are basically laying in a pod somewhere, there are virtual versions of themselves (“avatars”) interacting with the culture outside.

      In the real world, we have avatars, too. When we are sleeping, our email, cellphone, and IM programs continue interacting with the culture outside of us. When someone sends an email, they get your “Away” response, if they call, they go to voicemail, or they can see your Instant Messenger status is set to “Busy”. While you sleep (or use the bathroom or go grocery shopping, etc.) your messages are stored and waiting for you the next time you check your phone or turn on your computer. In that sense, you are always immediately available (or at least your virtual administrative assistant is).

      Another part is, of course, training people to acknowledge the difference between a “fire drill” and an actual fire, and then weaning them off the immediate response mentality. It is easy to start, though. David Allen (of “Getting Things Done” fame) and Tim Ferriss (“The Four Hour Work Week”) offer a similar tip that I used even pre-ROWE.

      Block out certain parts of the day where you designate time to respond to messages (say, from 11am to Noon and 4p to 5p–i.e., just before lunch and just before you go home, when the maximum amount of messages will be waiting for you). The rest of the day, set your auto-response to say something like, “Thank you for your email. I consider all messages important, but to better respond to everyone’s needs while increasing my own efficiency and response rate, I reply to messages between 11a-Noon and 4p to 5p daily. If your message can not wait until 11am or 4pm, please call my cell at 555-555-5555. Thank you for understanding. Have a great day.”

      That is kind of general, and every person, as well as every company, is different. The approach might vary depending on your context, but that was a good place to start for me. (An even better approach, though, in my opinion, is to hire the experts at CultureRx and totally go ROWE… but… I am a little biased that way.)

    • John

      Hi Nate, I work in such a culture. We have managers who send an e-mail and then seconds later start calling you to get a response. The funny thing is, most people work with have meetings. Some days they are back to back. I deliver training too. I attend conference calls and sometimes I even go to the loo! As Michael points out you can manage people’s expectations with out of office replies and IM messages and then to further help them understand, you can remind them when you speak to them that your job does require you to look away from your computer from time to time and that they will not always be able to get hold of you immediately.

  • Nate

    Thanks for the response! I like the Avatar concept..and I certainly agree with it. Man, I’d love to do whatever I can to help change the way people think about work. It’s insanity that we live in an information age, yet we work in an industrialized way….I could go on a steep tangent about extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation and how our workplaces and education system promote and teach the former…but I’ll leave that out.

    I try to do what I can where I’m working, but man, it’s tough. We have an ‘innovation’ message board to post ideas and I posted the whole concept of ROWE maybe a year or so ago. It was taken off the board and categorized as ‘under review’ (again, that was over a year ago). I guess by under review they meant, ‘we better take this off so nobody else sees.’

    Someone I used to work with had a wife that got a new job in NYC. He asked if he could work remote and fly in when necessary for important meetings or even do video meetings if needed. Trust me when I say it would have been fine and there’s no reason he needed to be in the office, but he was told ‘no’ and was basically forced to leave.

    ….it’s sad, frustrating….and just archaic how we do things.

    I write about this a lot and really want to get into work doing this kind of stuff and promoting it, but it seems like it’s falling on deaf ears within the organization I work in.

    Although, I suppose I’m preaching to the choir here :)

    • Cali

      Nate – you can preach, talk, rant and rave all you want here. We’ll take it all. Funny (not haha funny, but the other kind) that your ROWE idea was taken off the innovation message board and categorized as being ‘under review’. When we were at Best Buy and trying to keep ROWE alive, we were told to stop working on it because it was being ‘put on hold’ – that happened three times. And…hmmm…trying to put people’s lives and the productivity of a company ‘on hold’ just seemed a little ludicrous so we kept going.

      Even though it feels like everything you’re doing and saying falls on deaf ears, there are some who are hearing and paying attention. You never know when the right ears are going to perk up and say “I want to know more…talk to me.”