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Tracking Time = INSANITY

Sep 12, 2011 » by Jody

Here’s why tracking time = INSANITY

  1. If you get your work done in less time (less time = less than 40 hours/week), you’ll get more work (which is no incentive for working efficiently).
  2. If you get your work done in less time, your job may be perceived as unnecessary.
  3. If you get your work done in less time, you’ll get paid less or put on part-time status.
  4. If you take longer than the amount of time you should take to get the work done (more time = more than 40 hours/week), you may be perceived as inefficient.
  5. If you take longer than the amount of time you should take to get the work done you may get a promotion, because you work so hard (which is why we all like to brag about the 50 – 60+ hours we put in each week!).
  6. If you take longer than the amount of time you should take to get the work done, you may be considered dedicated, hard-working and a valuable asset.
  7. If you take exactly the right amount of time to get the work done (40 hours/week), you may be perceived as only doing the bare minimum (Hey, everyone else is working 50-60 hours! Why aren’t you?).
  8. If you take exactly the right amount of time to get the work done, you may never get promoted (only the hard-working, dedicated people get promoted).

The problem with tracking time is that it takes the focus away from one thing: measuring results. When you take away time-tracking, everyone becomes as efficient as possible. Nobody talks about how many hours they work, because it’s irrelevant. And, time no longer has power as the currency that measures work.

For managers, the benefits of a results-only workplace where time is not a measure of work are many:

  1. Results become clear as employees seek clarity
  2. Work gets done faster
  3. Communication gets sharper
  4. Managing to results becomes easier than managing people’s time
  5. Productivity goes up
  6. Morale goes up
  7. Voluntary turnover goes down
  8. There is much less wasted time
  9. Teamwork happens without team-building exercises
  10. Creativity happens

The ‘Conroys’ of the world don’t stand a chance in workplace where time-tracking has relevance.

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  • Nate Guggia

    This is so Seth Godin like it’s awesome!!!!  The biggest thing is shifting paradigms.  It begins at the top and works it’s way down.  The employee (employee mindset) needs permission to focus on results.  Once granted permission to do this (authentic permission with total buy in) magic will happen.  Shift the paradigms at the top and the entire culture shifts almost instantly.  Love it!

    • http://www.gorowe.com Cali Ressler

      @Nate – did you just say “this is so Seth Godin”??? We’re not worthy of that comment! :) But if you say so.

      This permission to focus on results is definitely important. Funny, isn’t it? We enter a job expecting to focus on results (because after all, why would you get a paycheck?) and quickly learn that it’s not about results at all…but playing a time game. Getting back to the basics of delivering results is needed…NOW!

  • PersephoneK

    This is timely as I was having a major guilt trip today at work. And you guys know I get ROWE yet I was still uncontrollably torn when I felt the need to take a mental break today. I had nothing in the tank to give yet had to stay at work. Im on track with my projects so if I could have gone home, it would have been fine but instead I found the need to look busy while instead answering some personal emails. Had I been allowed to go home, is probably be working right now when I have my creative second wind instead of surfing the net and watching Pawn Stars with a cat sleeping on my lap.

    • http://www.gorowe.com Cali Ressler

      @PersephoneK – ugh!!! The guilt trips happen – don’t get down on yourself. But knowing that you could have been even more productive tonight had you just stopped the madness earlier in the day is definitely frustrating.

      Next time you run into the guilt, try the avenue that you know will be most productive in the long run…and let us know how it goes…

      Yes? :)

      • http://twitter.com/PersephoneK PersephoneK

        I will do my best!  I’m on a shorter leash than i used to be now though now that I’m a replaceable contractor monitored by billable hours.  :)   I just find it ironic that its often the honest, hard-working people who are most guilt-trip prone, even when we know we shouldn’t be!

        On a side, but related note, today I experienced a sad bout of sludge-dropping.  A relatively new co-worker — we’ll call her Beatrice — who sits near me and my cube mate felt the need to come over to vent (unsolicited) about an IT person who had been using her cubemate’s phone earlier in the day while the IT person was installing something on the guy’s computer (when he wasn’t there).  Apparently it so bothered Beatrice that the IT person was talking on the phone to her boyfriend (a gasp! personal call) and disturbing her from working that Beatrice felt the need to come over to our cube to complain for 15 minutes that the IT worker was wasting her time, and the company’s time, being unprofessional, and just shouldn’t be talking on the phone about personal stuff while at work (even though the IT person was actually waiting for a tech install to complete and had nothing else to do anyway, and was thus accomplishing results…).  I found it ironic that Beatrice decided to waste my time (well, mostly my cubemate’s time because I tuned her out while rolling my eyes) to complain about someone else wasting her time.  I wish I’d had a “no sludge zone” sign handy.  :) 

      • KellyK

        Ouch.  If she really was disturbing Beatrice from her work, that’s a problem.  But it’s solved by saying “Hey, could you keep it down so I can concentrate? Thanks!” not by whining to other people. 

        And I do find it really irritating that people gripe about “wasted time” when the alleged time-waster is waiting for something to happen.  Heck, if anything, they’re using their time *more* productively by getting a mental break when there’s nothing productive for them to be doing, instead of taking a break later.

      • http://twitter.com/PersephoneK PersephoneK

        I got the sense based on Beatrice’s complaints that IT girl wasn’t really that disturbing to her.  She just felt the need to be the hall monitor.

  • http://cat.alyst.org C. A. Hurst

    Hi ROWE Team,

    As usual, another great post.

    I would like to add to Nate’s comment that not only is this Seth Godin-ish, but also part of the adaptive social change (Oh, wait, that’s ROWE’s very own Michael Barata!) that a growing cadre of thought-leaders are calling for.

    What you, Cali, Jody, and the rest of your team, are doing is putting into practice the elements of change others (Seth Godin, Dan Pink, Richard Florida, Peter Sims, Tim Sanders, Sir Ken Robinson, Thomas Friedman, etc.) are seeing and writing about. You are the visionaries who are also the boots on the ground that are taking the ideas into the work force and the educational system to figure out how to get this thing to work in reality. You are creating an on-going pilot program that will continue to provide the data the chicken littles need in order to take a chance and make a little bet to see what will work.

    We love you and we love the work you’re doing. Go ROWE!

  • Anonymous

    I think it’s a little more subtle than this post claims.

    Time tracking for auditing IS total insanity. It’s degrading, demoralizing, and establishes an incentive to be less efficient.

    Time tracking for planning, however, is often helpful. If you are trying to figure out how long it takes to complete a task so that you can build a schedule or create a workflow patterns with your team, that’s entirely different.

    I see the distinction as the difference between micromanaging and self-managing. The former is always bad. The latter is always good. It’s not the managing (or the time tracking) that’s the problem: it’s the person doing it and the rationale for the activity.

    • Stacey Swanson

      @robbyslaughter- I am one of the biggest planners and organizers on the ROWE team.  However, tracking time as results and as a way to say “I am done for the day” is insane.  You may have a deadline to meet on a project.  But, just because you met the deadline, does that mean the customer was satisfied? And that you delivered a quality product?  Time is an old measurement.

      • Anonymous

        Stacey, there’s nothing wrong with measuring time, it’s just a question of how you interpret that measurement. If the measurement is used as a way to justify value (I’ve worked eight hours, so I’m done for the day) then you are absolutely right. But if you are measuring time so that you can plan your own future, that’s entirely different.

        It’s good to do a dress rehearsal before the actual play so the technical staff can make sure they have enough time to rotate props and change costumes. That doesn’t mean the audience is going to do anything ludicrous like pay admission fees based on minutes of showtime, but it does enable a smoother production overall.

      • Stacey Swanson

        Yes- if time is the outcome, that is the problem.  Go ROWE!

    • KellyK

      I think tracking the time it takes to complete a given task, in order to plan better, makes a lot of sense.  The trick is taking little enough time to track that you get useful info without it becoming pointless. 

      I also think that using “hours worked” to make those estimates can be misleading.  If my timesheet says I worked 4 hours on Project X, on the day I accomplished Task A, does that mean Task A took 4 hours?  Or was it 2 hours, and the other two was a combination of breaks and miscellaneous other work (e-mails, HR training, whatever)? 

      • Anonymous

        Kelly, you are absolutely correct. It’s a subtle but important distinction–you can use time tracking to plan how long you will need but you should NEVER use time tracking to report how much time passed.

  • Kirk

    What if you bill the client based on time an materials model? (i.e. what if you have an hourly rate for billing?)

    • http://www.michaelreynolds.com Michael Reynolds

      Kirk, I have personally worked through this and discussed it in this blog post:

      http://www.michaelreynolds.com/productivity/rowe-and-freedom-from-time-based-billing/

      Basically, we threw time and materials out the window. A lot of people say things like “well, we could never do that!” but then I ask, “then how come we can do it?” The web solutions business is pretty complex and has lots of moving parts and variables, yet we were able to make the switch. I would to answer more specific questions about it if you have any after reading my post.

  • Josh Brammer

    Great article on why hours can be counter productive. Any tips on how to successfully move from hours to results without getting stuck in a quota trap?

    Example:
    The ‘results’ of your job is to complete a project and get client approval. The longer you work on the project, the better it could become. So there’s motivation to spend more energy per project, not just complete it as quickly as possible.

    I’m not super clear on how to frame expectations for my employees so that:
    - Employees feel they have a fair workload when having multiple projects, or feel good about how much time they can spend on a project without feeling rushed to complete work too quickly
    - The company can gauge when to hire more team members to share the work, or to be able to take on more projects

    Easy question, I know ;-)

    • Stacey Swanson

      Josh- The key is making sure the client needs are met by the agreed upon deadline.  If you look at managing the deadlines to meet your clients’ needs, versus how many hours each person is working in a week, you will be on the right track.  Capacity planning is tough, and in a traditional environment by planning hours doesn’t mean customers’ needs are being met.  So start by looking at the customer needs and work your way backwards.

      Hope this helps! Go ROWE!

  • http://twitter.com/KCCarper Kathleen Carper

    Such a great post! Using time for scheduling purposes can’t be avoided in some industries, but is absolutely pointless as a measurement of productivity in others, particularly in the corporate world where knowledge workers are a large percentage of the workforce. It is a counterproductive carryover from the practice of the mind-numbing assembly line, and indicates a lack of trust and/or worries over potential legal issues on the part of leadership that sabotages true innovation. With the technology we have today, it shouldn’t matter where you do your job, when you do your job, but simply THAT you do your job.

    • http://twitter.com/StaceyMSwanson staceyswanson

      Kathleen-  Agreed! I would add that in EVERY industry tracking time is not the outcome.  Think about good and bad retail experiences.  Sometimes we run into a retail employee who is clearly there to count the minutes away.  And in other situations, you really know if the retail employee is going above and beyond to make a great customer interaction.  ROWE helps everyone focus on the result!

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