This is an office - Ogilvy & Mather Offices in Guangzhou
Some of us spend more time at the office than in any other place. To encourage creativity of their staff, Ogilvy & Mather had their Guangzhou office designed by M Moser & Associates around the theme “Carnival of Ideas”. Do you think the employees enjoy going to work? Ok maybe your company doesn’t have the budget, the space and the guts to put a carousel in the corridor. But let’s see how you can improve productivity and make the office a pleasant place from a management perspective.
ROWE stands for Results-Only Work environment. Created by CultureX and applied by Best buy, this management strategy is focusing on results instead of working on a time-based measurement. Basically, it is about giving people more trust and freedom to make them feel more responsible and help them increase productivity.
How does that work? Although you cannot apply all these rules for managing your team – some people need discipline, you can certainly get a few hints. Basically it relies on results and trust :
Actions based on Results
x Optional meetings. Let the people decide if they need to go or not. Can they use their time in a more effective way? If they think so, let them do it.
x Base rewards on results, not on how much time they spend in the office. Is the guy always staying late the one that brings more productivity?
x Stop interrupting people by walking around to check-in all the time. This is highly counterproductive.
x Plan ahead instead of sending urgency signals all the time to pressure deadlines. Eventually it will end up just like Peter and the Wolf, when nobody takes you seriously anymore.
x If facing an under-performance situation, talk to your people and focus on the work itself.
Actions based on Trust
x It’s up to people to decide their own work-life balance.
x Don’t judge how people spend their time and make sure people within your team don’t do it either.
x Let the people decide if they can leave early – instead of allowing them to. The article talks about a snow storm, well in Shanghai it can be a Typhoon too.
x Trust your people like you trust yourself. I believe this means micro-managers are just bosses lacking of self-confidence.
x Try to make people feel good enough in the office so they actually want to come and work with you. Be nice. Enjoy.