Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It: A Results-Only Guide to Taking Control of Work, Not People

Introduction

Back in 2003, my business partner, Cali Ressler, and I were employees in the human resources (HR) department at Best Buy, Co., Inc., where we got the crazy idea that organizations could trust their people to do their work and live their lives without having to intervene or “manage” them. We believed that giving people what they really wanted—complete autonomy to manage all of the demands in their lives—could actually be successful. Businesses would prosper. People would be happier. And, we had faith—faith that people would not only want to but would do the right thing. ROWE—Results-Only Work Environment—was born out of this faith.

Since then, we’ve validated the fact that this simple notion was, indeed, correct. When you treat people like adults, they act like adults. When people are treated like children, they act out. And we’ve proved that organizations can trust their employees to own their work without outdated HR policies regarding office hours, time off, dress code, inclement weather, and the like. The notion that “Some people just need more structure” was exposed for what it really is: another way of saying, “I don’t know how to effectively manage the work, so now I’m going to manage you.”

One of our clients, Kyle Pederson, owner of Learner’s Edge, whose organization offers leading-edge, thought-provoking, versatile graduate credit for teachers, said,

As a manager, I need to manage the work, not the people. [Doing so allows me to] enable my employees to have ...