Results Only Work Environment: the Future of Work

It’s Tuesday.  Your first inclination is to groan and rush to the shower as your child awakens you, but today is different.  Today, you were given the permission to do whatever you want, whenever you want as long as the work gets done.  You hug your child, plan your day, making every effort to get the most out of time with your family and your work.  Then, your feet hit the floor, faster, with more purpose.  You connect with your team and before 8:00 AM, you have accomplished more than you did all last week.  You break, stepping outside for a breath of fresh air.  You walk.  For fifteen minutes, you bask in the sunlight while you refocus your work and life.  You relax more, contemplating your new world, wondering how it took you this long to capture this level of productivity and investment in your work and home life.  You’re a greater asset to your organization, you’re a better parent, you’re a better, healthier YOU.  Finally, you’re living the future of work, and you’re passionate enough to share your story with others.

This isn’t a fictitious fairy tale.  This world of work was my very own starting in 2009.  My job was intense: my team was responsible for transforming our culture to a Results Only Work Environment.  We trained between 500 and 900 staff per month.  I coached leaders to understand their role in managing the work, not the people.

My passion was intense:  I married, sold two houses, and bought one without missing a beat.  As I gave birth to my first and second child, I became even more passionate about this work environment.  I found that I was effective and productive holding my sleeping newborn baby in my arms while leading a program, responding to emails, consulting for external agencies, and designing new tools and processes to support the new world of work.  (What else are you going to do with a baby who sleeps the majority of the time? 🙂

I worked from everywhere, anytime.  I worked while getting pedicures, in the doctor’s office, out of multiple regional sites, on my patio.  I became a master at using technology to do my best work.  Each day, I was in constant contact with my team, working through issues, planning for training, supporting each other.  When my first baby was born, my team took turns holding her while we sorted out our goals and tasks.  We shared offices.  We shared ideas.  Our conversations focused on the customers and the teams’ strengths.  My manager focused on results.  We were a team.

It hit home.  I recognized that the time commonly referred to as the “witching hour” for babies was exactly the time I had in the evening to be with my children.  I only saw my baby when she was crying, screaming, and inconsolable.  I thought it was me.  But one magical day, I was home for my daughter’s happy moments:  between 8-10AM.  I saw her giggle, coo, play, and I realized that if I wanted, I could be there to see her happy.  Two to three times during the week, I arranged to see my daughter giggle.  I became a better mother, a better wife, a better team member, and a better leader by making that small change.

For years, we worked with teams to help them achieve what we were living and breathing every day.  We worked with leaders to help them understand their new role and recognize that going back to the 1950’s in management is not an option:  Management by walking around is our past, not our future.  The future workers use time, location, and creativity to enhance productivity.  The leaders of the future focus on the work.  They don’t pay in increments of time, they pay for work (and they understand the difference).

I created and my team implemented a program called “Focus on Results,” a program that engages staff and leaders in work *together* to clarify goals and identify performance indicators.  2800 people were directed to clarify their results using this methodology.  The language and learning became a part of the culture.

As the culture transformed, my team moved on, each promoted toward their own career goals, becoming leaders that continue to transform our culture.

In every team since, I have worked to recreate the feeling and clarity around autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  It’s good for all of us.

What happens when you empower staff to make responsible decisions…what happens when you treat employees as adults….is transforming.  The organization blossomed throughout this change and now, the view of the change is breathtaking.

In my organization, events like the Hennepin5K were planned (last year the event was organized at 6 locations with 449 participants, this year the event is at 8 locations with a 50 flights of stairs included).  Lean In Hennepin, a movement to address gender differences in the workplace was astoundingly successful, and the life-changing stories of those who were able to spend more time with their kids, arrange to be home when  their children got out of school, were able to go to school events, spent months working in Europe with their family, and were able to breathe in ways they hadn’t experienced before are unforgettable.

Productivity soared.

So, today, I reconnected with the two ladies who challenged the status quo and created the Results Only Work Environment.  These two ladies forced me to use wings I didn’t know I had…and now can’t forget exist.  Their no B.S. approach to creating a work environment that empowers the 90% of people who want to do great work and addresses performance of that 10% of do-nothingers is inspiring and challenging for anyone…and the challenge is well worth it.  

To Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, co-creators of the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), evangelists, culture guru’s, and professionals that you need to meet and have them meet your management…thank you.  

The world is a better place because you (and we) are in it.

(Check them out at http://www.gorowe.com)

So, what’s holding us back from achieving this reality?  Who is responsible for challenging the status quo?  What will it take for employees to be recognized and celebrated as whole human beings with families, technology, and lives?

Simply Focus on the Work

It’s a simple concept, really.  A concept that for leaders takes less time, less resources, and is less of a headache, yet the adjustment is insurmountable for many leaders.  The consideration of such simplicity for a role of a leader is beyond comprehension.  It’s so simple that many leaders fear that their career history has become a culmination of many, many years of unproductive and avoidable conversations and unnecessary organizing.  It’s that simple.

We hire talented, motivated, energized human beings who, on day 1, want to invest themselves in their work.  Through the culture work of our legacy leaders who taught us about “leadership,” we quietly, quickly relieve our employees of motivation and energy just by the nature of the work we’ve been trained to do and until now, thought we were doing well.

We’ve lost focus.  Through years of training, we’ve learned to focus on where people are, when they are working (and when they are not), and not what they are expected to achieve.  We empower staff who are skilled at “presenteeism,” the act of being present and accomplishing nothing.  We talk about hours and time and days off, and we rarely discuss work roles, responsibilities, accomplishments, and accountability even though every year, staff report in surveys that they want to talk about these topics.  Why do we avoid these conversations?

Maybe because….

1)  Leaders believe they should know what people are doing at all times.  There is a misconception that leaders should know, without asking, what each of their staff is doing (generally because it’s what they told them to do).  If they can’t see them, then they assume they aren’t working (research indicates that staff are up to 40% more productive when you can’t see them).

2)  Leaders require different skills to manage to results.  After years of juggling vacation time, managing by counting heads, and solving staff’s problems, leaderrs have incredible talent in time management for others and virtually no skills in clarifying results and empowering people to solve their own problems and develop the team.

3)  Leaders are trained to become great parents…to adults.  Over the years, our work culture has encouraged and trained leaders to use parenting skills and tactics to address problems with their “children.”  Yet, their “children” are grown adults.  Have you ever heard from a leader, “I run a daycare at work” or “I always have to stop the kids from running amuck at work”?  These types of statements from leaders permeate leadership circles, reinforcing the idea that leaders are glorified childcare (for adults).

There’s hope.  And it’s simple. I have worked with hundreds of teams to help them clarify their results, and coached leaders to manage the work, not the people.  My team helps leaders achieve a higher level of performance management, coordination, and team awareness of the work and the goals they hope to achieve by doing their work.

My team coaches leaders to build competency, autonomy, and relatedness with each individual on their team.  Leaders stop managing calendars, vacation time, and coverage, and they work with their teams to develop a competency and self-sufficiency within the team to accomplish these tasks.  They focus on building trust within their teams and developing partnerships within the team to cover the work. They encourage staff to develop conflict resolution skills and work together toward a common goal.

They allow staff the autonomy to work wherever and whenever they want so staff are able to manage their work and life simultaneously. Productivity soars.  They have serious conversations about the career goals of the individuals on their team and don’t fear the loss of talented staff who promote.

They create documented agreements with their staff that they can reflect upon regularly.  If problems arise, the issues are documented and a resolution plan in place.  If problems persist, they have record of performance management.

It’s simple.  When you Focus on results and develop self-sufficient, competent, autonomous, career focused staff, you experience a higher level of professionalism and productivity within your team.  You find you are the sought-after employer.  Talent knocks. With your free time (and you’ll have plenty), you’ll explore the organization, research best practices, learn facilitation skills, advance your career and leadership skills, and relax…it’s that simple.

For more information about Focus on Results, a culture transformation initiative and results program, contact me at carolyn.vreeman@gmail.com.

Put Your Best YES Forward.

A girl walks into your office.  She is excited about a new idea she has to improve how you do business.  Her palms are sweaty, her voice shakes as she proposes this new idea.  She’s never presented an idea like this to you before.  As a leader, before she even starts to speak, you have two options: 1) You decide at that moment, that you will encourage, empower, and support your employee.  You will put your best YES forward.  2) You decide at that moment that your job is Gatekeeper of ideas and that the word “no” could be a useful tool.

1)  Put your best YES Forward.  As you are listening to the idea, you eliminate “NO” from your vocabulary.  Even if it’s the worst idea you’ve ever heard or you’ve tried that 1,000 times before, or you don’t think the person can pull it off, you make it a YES. 

When you put your best YES forward, you seek for options that are doable.  You ask questions that will make the idea successful, and most importantly, you promote idea-sharing.  You might suggest she talk to a colleague to research options or spend time researching what other areas/businesses/teams do or give her other ideas to think about, but ultimately, your goal is to help her find the YES you both need to move forward. 

When you put your best YES forward, you create an environment where idea-sharing is safe, where people experience being a valuable member of the team who contributes valuable ideas.    And to create this environment, you must believe that your staff, those who do the work every day, have the best ideas.  They do. 

2)  Use the “Knee-jerk No” Leadership Style:  In this approach, you use your authority to squash new ideas.  It seems to others that you have to work through all of the reasons it won’t work to appreciate a new idea.  These leaders rarely hear new ideas from their employees because they don’t believe their employees have the best ideas.  They believe they should propose the ideas.  They create a work environment for their employees where employees wait for the next command.  Employees finish a task, report in, and wait.  They don’t engage in continuous improvement activities, and speaking of engagement, they aren’t.  If they have talent, they won’t stay here long.  Which means the business should look at who they ARE retaining.

A few years ago, I helped a young, energetic staff create a full business proposal to improve office support coverage in her area.  Her supervisor was a “knee-jerk No” leader.  She initially proposed the idea in a supervision session and it was shot down (brutally).  She didn’t give up.  She created a formal proposal, putting hours of her free time into designing the new coverage calendar.  She created a power point and presented it again to her “Knee-jerk No” Leader.  Her leader asked her to email the power point and then presented the power point to her managers, taking full credit for the proposal and work supporting it.  The young, energetic staff left.  The impact on the team who had been aware of their colleagues work around the proposal was insurmountable.  The team fell into a “funk.”  Some staff left for other jobs, and the others stayed but morale was low and the culture on this team was “wait for the next order and don’t think outside of the box.”  Think that’s the end of the story?  No.  The impact didn’t just affect the team.  This group supported over 100 other staff on multiple floors.  Word spread…gossip happened. 

Flip that, put your best Yes forward and see what happened in this other real-life scenario:   During a coaching session with a manager, he presented an idea that he said he’d been thinking about for years.  The manager put her best YES forward and asked him the right questions to work through his idea.  She knew it would take resources from outside their area to make it happen so she continued to talk through the options and possibilities.  They found a YES together, one that had some struggles but eventually became one of the most exciting and favored ideas of not only their management team but their customers as well.  In the end, it didn’t look anything like the initial proposal, but it was certainly viewed as a YES for the organization.

So, next time someone enters your office, I recommend putting your best YES forward.  It’s easy.  It’s important.  And in the end, you’ll see the value over and over again for you, your team, and the organization.