gordonbaty's Blog

I'm taking steps toward setting up a ROWE for my team, but I wouldn't say I'm there yet. As far as managing results, we have cross-functional project teams that have deadlines and clients to please. I pretty much rely on them to keep an eye on results and raising issues. There's still quite a gap though, and one of the things I'm working on is visibility. When everyone is in the office at the same time there's lots of little interactions and eyeballing of each other's work that happens informally but has quite an impact on overall results. I'm looking at online tools like Basecamp and Ning that create new channels for sharing work and keeping people in touch - to create that type of visibility. I'd love to hear any success stories people have had with that type of thing.

I'd say this highlights the buy-in issue with ROWE. If you're boss doesn't talk about and embrace ROWE then you need to recognise that he has a an old school system for running his/her department. Just because you put in extra hours doesn't mean you're owed anything if there isn't an up-front agreement about flexible hours. It's possible even that your boss thinks you're crazy for staying late when the deal is that everyone gets to leave at 6!

I'd say thank your boss for letting you out early (since he's evidently still running things by the clock, in which case he is actually doing you a favour) and put your energy into introducing ROWE to your boss and showing them that there's another, better way. Getting mad at your boss for not realising there's a better way to manage his team isn't entirely reasonable. If your boss claims to be running a ROWE department but still 'lets you out early' then there definitely is a problem, but that doesn't sound like the case here.