Best Buy, Yahoo are right: Work is best at office

Congratulations to the new Best Buy and Yahoo CEOs, and to other organizations jettisoning the "Results-Only Work Environment" (ROWE). Best Buy's new chief rightly identified the systemic toxic effects of an absurd ROWE implementation, calling it "a fundamentally flawed plan for leadership."

Marissa Mayer at Yahoo saw the same thing. ROWE also reared its head at Fairview Health Services, recently in the paper for huge organizational problems, just like Best Buy and Yahoo.

ROWE is not a tonic to organizational structure or culture; in fact, it is toxic.

ROWE kills the concept of "we" and replaces it with "me." ROWE seeks goals that are the antithesis of traits found in successful companies, teams, relationships and people — the concepts of commitment, sacrifice and presence.

ROWE preaches that managing "sucks," work sucks, structure sucks, being managed sucks, being reviewed sucks. ROWE says that the magic solution for employee happiness is to let them work wherever, whenever, however they want, and that management must not interfere with an employee's concept of self and work productivity.

ROWE evangelizes "dialing it in," as opposed to being present in the moment and showing up (even if there is some snow outside). It cheers working from the couch in your jammies instead of making it into work for the meeting.

The ROWE creators — who ironically are founders of a company of two — have written volumes of slide decks and books and other propaganda espousing how much and why work sucks and managing sucks (this language is used in the titles of their books). Let us all hope that this flawed paradigm doesn't get into any more CEOs' heads.

Best Buy fell hard for ROWE — and failed. Target went the opposite direction and is an industry, financial and corporate-culture success story. (Similarly, the stock of Google, a presence-required firm, soared, while Yahoo's bottomed out.)

Target embraced the power of presence, the concept of team, and the benefits of being together, working together and seeing one another as a result of showing up to work.

How the benefits of going into work and interacting with your coworkers has been marginalized — and even described as horrible — I don't know. These are the traits of successful firms.

In the days of Best Buy's storied embrace of its now-failed ROWE, the company was the subject of national news stories about how people opted to work from their beds, couches, poolside — from their health clubs, their favorite lucky seat at Starbucks, or their boat or cabin. I suspect Best Buy would now admit that although the concept was good, it may have been overdone just a bit.

While Best Buy stock flounders and layoff notices are sent, Target's financial performance and corporate culture is seen as a model. I wonder how the performance of Best Buy's employee stock option plan compares with Target's over the past five years?

Finally, a note of caution for those remote workers who insist that going into an office is simply too much to be expected of them:

There are millions of "remote workers" in other countries who agree with you completely. They would love to take over your remote-worker role — at about one-fifth of your salary. Winning the argument that your job and your skills are not needed at the office only further justifies your company's sending your job to places like India with its vast, talented, educated and capable remote workforce.

Of course, workers will always need flexibility to mesh work and personal lives. That is not a question. But ROWE is not the way to do it.

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