When you see the title of the book, dear readers, you will exclaim: “Aah, another book about flexible schedules and bicycles in offices!”And you will be wrong. The book, written by two female managers working at Best Buy, does not tell how cool it is for bank employees to come to the office on Fridays in jeans, and for sales managers at Microsoft to work once a week from a cafe 2 blocks from the office on their Windows 8 tablets. Here in general, there is not a line about the corporate nonsense that beginners and experienced employees are “sold” under the sign “flexible schedule and career opportunities.” Instead, 250 pages of practical examples and step-by-step implementation of the ROWE — system of result-oriented work will be on your desk.” What would you say if you found out that you can come to work whenever you want and leave whenever you want, and the “40 hours a week rule” would be forever buried in the crypts of corporate archives? Do you think that doesn't happen? Then it's time for you to start reading.
I prefer the original title of the book from Kali Ressler and Jodi Thompson: “Why work sucks and how to fix it” — but in the Russian publishing house of business literature “MYTH”, whose efforts the book was published in Russian in 2013, apparently, considered such a title too straightforward and sharp for the domestic ear. It is not surprising: 80% of the ideas presented in the book, if they are implemented in domestic companies, then this implementation will take place with a “fight”, where Adults and Common Sense will be on one side of the barricades, and on the other side a Big Boss and Corporate Rules.
There are no diagrams and illustrations in the book, but there are 8 stories of managers with different skill levels, different experiences and different problems and ages. These are the stories of managers and employees of Best Buy, which has become a leader in the e-commerce segment, despite the fact that today the overwhelming number of its employees work on the basis of the Result Only Work Environment, where the decisive role is played by the result and timely completion of tasks, and not the number of hours worked. For example, you will learn why “owls” and “larks” can work equally productively in a modern corporation, even if some will arrive at the office by 8 am, and the second by 3 pm.You will also learn how a 55-year-old employee was able to take care of a sick mother, move to another state, and at the same time exceed all work plans, although in a stable “traditional” company he would have been fired as soon as he needed to move. Or how at 30 you can pay attention to yourself and your family every day, and not just “rejoice” with a small increase in salary every six months and a vacation for 14 days once a year.
1. The changed reality of business itself pushes us to measure the results of work of each employee, department or the entire team in the company, and not the number of hours “hatched" in the office. Are you competing for the title of “iron ass of the month"? Or do you still want the work to have a result?
2. ROWE can (and should) be used as the basis of modern management. To refer to “disorganization” and the fact that “it doesn't happen like that” means potentially not trusting people who work with you or for you. If you don't trust them, then why do they work for you at all?
3. Meetings are a universal corporate “toxin" that kills time, nerves and gives nothing but endless transfusion of “water” and a potential exchange of negativity in search of the “extreme.”Do you continue to wander around the meeting rooms and gather people there so that they are distracted from real work for 2-3 hours a day?
4. “Office stuff” (gossip, banter, intrigue, searching for “extreme" and tracking who comes/goes at what time) has become a way of self-justification in 90% of companies and masking personal work inefficiency. Do you continue to “spy” on how your colleagues work instead of going about their business?
5. ROWE allows you to be effective even for those who, in the traditional work model, would often have to take a vacation or quit altogether. And do you continue to “disperse” people who did not want to become “office hamsters,” or do you still evaluate the results, and not the presence in the work “cubicle”?
6. “Work is war”: this postulate is doomed to extinction, because no one else wants to die from a heart attack at 30 and from alcoholism due to work stress at 40.
7. Time is your asset and only yours; no one has the right to condemn you for how you build your working day and why you manage to complete all your tasks in 4 hours, and not in 8.
8. ROWE is not suitable only for the dead and for those who are “stuck” in an office chair to gain at least 40 hours in 5 days.
Management: top, middle, and in general all managers, especially IT companies, web projects and non-material spheres of activity. Read to “tie up” with stupid questions “Why did you leave so early/come so late?” and not to give out the title of “Best employee of the month” according to the principle of the largest number of meetings and “sit-ins” until 23:00.
Employees: to understand that “we are not slaves, slaves are not us.”You have the right to life and to be treated as professionals and adults. If the boss believes that the most important thing is to turn off social networks at work, install a time tracking system and force everyone to gather in the boardroom at least once every 2 days, it's time for you to look for a new boss and a new, adequate place of work. The times of planned economy and “hard hourly work” in the non-material sphere ended back in 2008, when this book began to be created.
People who are temporarily out of work / preparing to come to their first job in the company: in order not to succumb to sweet fairy tales about “flexible schedule" and “the future.” There is only one future in the company: what will happen to you in the workplace tomorrow. If tomorrow (like yesterday, like the day after tomorrow, and generally always) you have a boss waiting for you, looking at the clock with displeasure and a system of “depremirovanie” for every “sneeze” and every minute of “underexposed” time in the office — maybe you don't need such a job?
The book is excellent, accessible in the manner of presentation, with fairly simple ideas and clearly pretends to be in almost any corporate library.
"A funky office. Manifesto of Remote Work", by Kali Ressler and Jodi Thompson
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