When I started working at my first big ad agency, I would show up at work at 8 or 8:15. Not because I was trying to be a kiss-ass but because I liked to leave around 5 and figured if I came in early and worked with little or no interruption, I could leave at a reasonable hour. I soon discovered, however, that nearly no one saw me arrive first but everyone watched me leave first. And although no one ever said anything, I felt like I was getting funny looks. So I decided I had to play the same fake productivity game everyone else did -- show up and leave around the same time as everyone else.
"Long day?"
"Oh yeah. Can't you see that by leaving at the same time as you, I can sigh about my long day, thereby reinforcing how hard a worker I am?"
In fact, there were days, even weeks, when I hardly worked at all. Projects were with clients for approval, business was slow or I'd finished all my assignments quickly. I would surf the internet, take short walks around the mall downstairs or go to the bookstore. But I still had to appear to be present, at least between the 9 to 5 hours. Because the conventional wisdom has always been that, like the tree that falls in the forest when no one is around, if you're seen to be working you must be and if you're not around you couldn't possibly be productive.
But performance expert Tony Schwartz writes:
"Why not measure employees by the value they create, rather than by the number of hours they sit at a desk? Too many companies continue to operate by the premise that their employees can't be fully trusted, and so treat them as children, who must be continuously monitored.... What we've created is a variation on something called the "Results Only Work Environment," which was first launched among corporate employees at Best Buy. 'The simplest definition of a ROWE,' founders Cali Ressler and Jodi Thompson have written, 'is that each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done.'"
It's not an entirely new idea but it's one that's slowly gaining acceptance, lucky for me. I hardly ever see most of my clients but I create enough value for them that they don't care that they can't see me working in a veal pen around the corner from them. They pay me for the time I put in or simply for the project and if there's a perceived imbalance -- either in how much I'm charging or the amount of effort and time I'm putting in -- we can have a frank discussion about it.
It seems to me a much more mature and honest way to do business than simply pretending that, because I see you sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours, you've done 8 hours of work.
What do you think?
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