Why I would implement ROWE

Writing about web page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Being in group B feels good for now...a lecture-free week! waow! short relief from 9am joggles. Yes, I don't fancy getting out of bed that early but well I have been coping so far.

So I have been thinking or should I say reflecting on the week so far and all I can think is the power of working in groups.6 people spending 5 hours = 30hrs. faster and more efficient than 1 person having to spend the 30hrs.

On Friday, in class this video of Dan Pink was played for the whole class. And sadly I got in few seconds after the video had started and this made it abit hard for me to follow because I had missed the introduction but thanks to Siddharth who posted the link on his blog. I was able to watch again and thanks to Paul who encorages bloging..oh its compulsory I almost forgot!

Dan Pink gave an illustration of how incentives/extrinsic motivations can affect performance by using "The Candle Problem" as stated in the video above. I will give a brief summary of what I extracted and why I would implement ROWE:

EXTRINSIC motivation can be replaced with INTRINSIC motivation:

Autonomy: The urge to direct our own lives -self direction.

Mastery: The desire to get better and better in something that matters. -Consistency and persistency in practice

Purpose: The yeaning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. -Living for something.

ROWE means "Result Only Work Environment" This an working evironment where no schedules are made, people work from anywhere at anytime but produce results.

Where I can not implement ROWE:

I would not implement ROWE in an environment where workers do not have self direction, self discipline, drive, understanding of vision and purpose of the business and no passion at all for the business. Basically ROWE implementation would be a blunder if implemented in an organisation where AMP (Autonomy Mastery and Purpose) i.e intrinsic motivation is not present in some form or the other.

But I can implement this where the above stated points are present and more as in a city where traffic is heavy at peak periods so instead of people spending productive hours in traffic, they can invest those productive hours into the business. Cities like Lagos and PortHarcourt in Nigeria are examples. In Lagos, People Living outskate would have to leave their homes at about 4:30am some 4am to get to work after driving through a heavy traffic for about 4 hours and same 4hours is spent while returning home from work sometimes even upto 7hours. That's a total of 8-11hours daily driving in traffic. And these same people spend 9hours working. But the truth is the first 2hours are used for adjusting Because you will definately need to adjust to be able to work effectively after spending such time on the on the road. and the last 2hours are used for preparation for the journey that lies ahead of them.... It a very common think for all workers around Lagos to begin to wind up at about 3PM. From that time meetings are attended grudgingly. It is very common, infact a norm for Lagosians to arrive home at 10-11PM on days the bottle necks were frequent.

Even though it can lead to cheating of some sort, I believe when workers have a healthy work habit, implementing ROWE will not detoriate the system.

Hmmm quite long I know.. but I had to pen it down its up my throat for a while.

Anne Ayang : 16 Oct 2013 00:08 |  Tags: Cbe Mbe Rowe |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem