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When I was writing a recent article on telecommuting I stumbled across the book "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It" by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. I recently received a complimentary review copy of the book and couldn't put it down.
In my day I spent over 17 years in Corporate America stuck in a cubicle and being treated like I was a 6 year old. So much of the culture and environment made no sense to me, truly plugged me in, and had a negative effect on me and my life. I never thought I'd read a book that verbalized so candidly how I felt about so much of it. Trapped like an animal in a cage begging for release and knowing there had to be a better way to get results in the business environment.
While I have freed myself from the cubicle through self-employment, what is interesting is the question "why does work have to be done this way?" holds true whether you work for someone or yourself. The only difference is when you work for yourself the path to implementing a shift in mindset and change is much shorter. Either way it comes down to your beliefs about work. I loved this passage from the book because I SO felt this way when I made the shift to self-employed:
Even if someone waved a magic wand and said, You are no longer judged based on time, you would probably still judge yourself based on time. You ahve spent so many years with a "lunch hour" that even if someone said, Take as long a lunch as you like, you are still going to check your watch halfway through your sandwich to see if you're taking too long.
Let me just say that my first month or two of self-employment I ran to my home office so I wasn't "late", timed my lunch, and forced myself to "work hard". Beliefs and long standing survival habits take some time to crack.
Unfortunately for so many companies those beliefs amount to nothing but Sludge being thrown from person to person which ultimately drives down results and kills morale. Ressler and Thompson define Sludge as:
Any negative comment we make that serves to reinforce old ideas about how work gets done. Another way of looking at Sludge is as a kind of code for the status quo.
In organizations you've got many people reinforcing the status quo all the time. Questions abound around "acceptable" excuses for leaving early, missing work, etc. People are judged only by the "ass in the seat" rule versus real results. This reinforces "business as usual" no matter how many quality, change management, and other motivational culture change programs a company puts in place. Ever been to a rash of these trainings, "new ways of doing business" meetings, and team building events only to walk away and have everything be exactly the same? Me too. This book talks about a fundamental shift in beliefs and way of doing business.
What makes work so stressful for so many is the lack of control coupled with the high demands placed of today's business environment. When you at least have control over how you deliver results and live your life, even the most demanding situation can become manageable. The book is peppered with vignettes from real people working in a ROWE environment in Best Buy which demonstrate that very thing.
I started cruising the Internet to see what other people had to say about the book. I felt such an affinity to it and only wish that ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) would become the norm in all companies. Yet I didn't want to appear like some crazy woman who receives a review copy of a book and can't stop raving about it -- what were others saying? I'm finding others have a similar affinity.
Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom has this to say about "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It":
What at first started as an underground movement and later gained the wholehearted support of the CEO, ROWE increased Best Buy’s productivity by 41 percent and reduced turnover by 90 percent in some divisions. I’ve been a fan since I first wrote about it on Water Cooler Wisdom back in 2006!
In a ROWE company or department, employees can do whatever they want whenever they want, as long as business objectives are achieved.
