Last weekend, John Wagner/On Message pointed me to a very good MSNBC article about Best Buy’s ROWE experiment for its employees (with ROWE meaning results-only work environment).
So, go ahead, read the comments on John’s post and the story. I’ll wait . . . .
Okay, but how would ROWE work in an agency environment?
Well, for a minor point, unlike Best Buy, there would have to be mandatory meetings. Face to face. Our work is all about communication. Interaction. Relationships. We can’t brainstorm, develop strategies and tactics, and other team-work activities via conference calls.
Secondly, we’d have to come to terms with objectives and goals for clients as a way to measure our productivity and value. We should be doing that already, but how often are year-long and campaign goals set? That is, for the client, not our agency income goals.
Yes, the work-at-home vs. work-at-the-office discussion could be worked out. For the most part, I don’t need to be in the office to do my work — just as long as I’m connected to the file server, my e-mail, etc.
I’d say we’d have to be in the office for team and client meetings, and X number of hours per week. The casual interaction, the stopping by a co-worker’s office for a quick question, working with creative to get RGB and CMYK jpgs and/or other work just can’t be done over the telephone or via e-mail.
It can, but something would be missing. Again, that level of one-on-one interaction among team members.
Let’s go back to the goals bit. Do we judge productivity on clients’ editorial coverage? Yes, but the lead time can be days to months, depending on the outlet.
What about social media? Do we judge by “hits” or visits to clients’ sites or sales?
What about turn out at events: # of customers/audience, media, etc?
What about clients’ internal communications programs: Do we judge by increase in morale (recorded via surveys), increase in participation rates in events and activities, feedback on newsletters and other communications?
Granted, these should already be part of our day-to-day jobs, but there is enough discussion and disagreement about PR measurement to make me think it’s not.
So, how would a results-only work environment work in an agency setting?
– Mike
Yes Mike, you have hit on the cultural problem of public relations in general. We are not very comfortable setting and meeting measurable objectives. So, number one, the culture would have to shift to that. Second, meetings to brainstorm and create ideas are useful, stopping by to shoot the breeze is a distraction. I was amazed at how much more work I got done in less time when I went solo. The first year was a hard adjustment, I too like the interaction. But, I adjusted and branched out in ways (blogging for one) that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. I think it could be done in an agency, I just think it would require a cultural shift, just as it has at Best Buy.
A ROWE wouldn’t work for an agency, or any client service business.
Mike Sacks: Why not?
I have done PR for 10 years for start-ups, no-profits and Fortune 500 clients. It is about the results. Period. This could definitely work!
John
John,
Thanks for the visit (and your newsletter — I’m a subscriber). In talking about a ROWE for PR, would PR pros be paid on the number of stories, sales inquiries, sales trends?
Or, I would assume, results include output like news releases, even newsletters, events, etc.?
Mike
Mike,
I work as a manager at an internet marketing agency, and I think ROWE could work here under some conditions.
Some accounts are fairly straightforward- we have handled just that kind of thing before. These can be remotely managed more easily than accounts that deal with new issues and challenges.
Getting in the brainstorming time is definitely an issue, but can be dealt with through scheduling meetings. If working at home or the coffee shop enables more work to get done/a higher quality of work, then the hassle in planning meetings is worth it.
-Brian
I think a point that is missing in all of the information I have read about ROWE is compensation. Everyone is putting forth the idea of “get the work done so you can do something else”, which althoug it is an incentive, it has no financial value to most people.
What needs to happen is a complete change in the employee/employer relationship. The truth is that a business owner wants x, y, and z done on time and worker Q wants to make the most money for the effort he puts forth. The logical solution is to completely drop the whole “Pay for time” concept and replace it with a “results=$X” concept. With this concept, a business owner creates a task order and either auctions it to the lowest quailfied bidder or manually selects candidates for the task. The selected worker has x number of hours/days/months to complete the task, and the pay is $X. To encourage them to work as quickly as possible, an early completion bonus of $X per day could be added and a late completion penalty of $X can be taken away.
This concept would work equally well for large or small tasks. If you don’t believe me, check out how many “Rent a programmer” sites are currently doing booming business on the Internet.
So to sum it up, the entire money for time concept must die. If you are going to do “results only”, then your pay should also be results only.
M@
M@: Great point, and one that I’ve not seen. So, would we all basically be like commissioned sales people?
Or, the “payment” could be, once you get your established responsibilities done, you’re done with work. Say you have 40 hrs worth of results to do (for example, with that 40hrs being the “typical” time to obtain the results), but get it done in 30 hours. So, your rate per hour is higher.
I don’t think a ROWE would work for all job functions (customer service when you need to be oncall at the convenience of customers, for example).
If city gov’ts and other employers have pay scales for jobs and experience, why not develop a similar scale for results?
Mike
http://www.whyrowesucks.com
My apologies to Mike for appearing like a spammer by just leaving a URL. Not my intention. Here’s some backgoround:
As a committed lifestyle-over-workstyle business owner, I was really looking forward to the ROWE book. I hoped that it would help me to restructure my business as a Results-Only Work Environment for everyone that works here.
In the end, I was hugely disappointed. “Cali and Jody” have put their consulting careers ahead of the ROWE idea itself, and handicapped its development, by publishing a 10-page memo in a 200-page form. The tagline for the book is ““No Schedules, No Meetings — No Joke”, but due to the complete lack of detail, the tag line should be: “No Tips, No Detail — No Help.”
More of my thoughts on the ROWE book can be read here: www.whyrowesucks.com.
Cheers,
Scott
Scott,
Thank you for taking the extra effort. I’m sure, if people even checked the URL of your name, they’d see you were a real person. But, a URL in the comment is very spam-ish.
Haven’t read your post yet, but definitely will. I’ve not been too up on ROWE of late so I look forward to learning more.
-Mike