WORK@HOME? TRUST ME by Dr. Cecil Clements (12th March 2013)
Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, who took the job about 7-8 months ago, did something that was very strange and raised a lot of eyebrows in the business world. She called in all the 'work@homes' in Yahoo's company and said, "You have till June to find corporate offices that you need to start reporting to." In effect, what she said was that the work@home option was no longer available at Yahoo. This has been a major thing for Yahoo because a lot of them worked from home.
She has taken a lot of flak from many people including Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin group who said this in his blog – 'Give people the freedom of where to work'. He says, "To successfully work with other people, you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision. It is the art of delegation, which has served Virgin and many other companies well over the years. It was really perplexing to see Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer tells employees who work remotely to relocate to company facilities."
Michael Schrage wrote another article entitled, 'Marissa Mayer is no Fool' and as you can see, this had developed a lot of interest in the corporate world. He says, "I don't think Marissa Mayer is a fool. Most successful technical leaders I know avoid getting in the way of their best people's productivity. But what do leaders do when even very good people aren't being as productive as you want or need them to be? I don't think Marissa Mayer has had a knee-jerk reaction. I believe that she has good data that shows that it is going to help the company to get her work@home employees into company locations."
He goes on to say, "CEOs have to make the very public choice around not just how best to empower people but how best to hold them accountable." I think there's a lot of truth to that. We not only have to let people have their head, to be able to find areas that they can work in, but to also make them accountable.
But what has really made this whole debate come almost front and center, is a decision by BestBuy CEO, Hubert Joly who is the latest corporate leader to axe flexible work. If you remember, probably a year or so ago, I talked about ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) and how BestBuy had adopted this kind of flexible work program. At that time it was one of the most innovative and celebrated examples of a company redesigning work to focus on results and boost performance through motivation and enhancing trust and autonomy. Under ROWE, corporate employees had the freedom to work when and where they wanted as long as they got their work done.
That had revolutionized BestBuy. In fact, according to the authors who had brought up this idea, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson who had written a book on ROWE, they said, "BestBuy, after incorporating ROWE, had produced $2.2 million in savings over 3 years. Allowing ROWE into the workplace helped increase productivity, employee wellbeing, work-life balance and also decreased the turnover of people, stopped the high attrition rates."
Monique Valcour says, "The end of 'Results Only' at BestBuy is bad news," as she writes for HBR blog network. ROWE has systematically implemented what decades of research studies have shown to be the keys to motivating and engaging a workforce for maximum performance, commitment and satisfaction. In short: help employees understand what needs to be done, gives them autonomy, trust and support to accomplish objectives in the ways that work best for them, and provide feedback and recognition to let them know how well they're doing and it reinforces good performance. It's a wonderful recipe, not only for promoting work-life balance, but also for maximizing the value and contribution of a firm's human capital over the long term"
She then goes on to say, "Actually when you look at the results of the concept that Marissa Mayer and Hubert Joly have now espoused, it seems that they are going back to the old 'Theory X' that was espoused in the 60s by Douglas McGregor of MIT Sloan School of Management, where he talked about 2 theories: Theory X and Theory Y.
· Theory X – you consider employees to be inherently lazy and that they will avoid work. Hence they need close supervision and comprehensive systems of controls to be developed.
· Theory Y – employees are ambitious and self-motivated. They enjoy work and given good conditions, most people will be productive.
Over the years, most management schools have adopted a balance between both these theories – Theory X & Y.
But what Monique Valcour is saying, "With these results only theories that have now begun to come through Yahoo and BestBuy, it seems that there is a lack of trust. Management is going back to saying that they don't really trust the employee as they're not being productive enough."
When you look at all that I have said, one of the things that comes through is that trust cuts both ways. Trust goes forth from management and trust also works back from employees. You cannot have only one person trusting.
The other thing that Monique says, "When you get people who don't have a long-term mentality; they come in with a short-term mentality, a 'get tough' mindset that favors rapid shocks over the slower, more difficult – but ultimately much more powerful – work of developing and communicating a strategy and harnessing the talent and creativity of committed engaged employees to implement it. In other words, to really see that employees reach their potential. When you have a short-term mentality, all you think about is the bottom line. And bottom lines really often come down to lack of trust."
I thought - What is needed is a balance and yet, it's a difficult tension to hold. To be able to trust employees, to be able to look even beyond what is expected of you as managers and leaders and say, "While the bottom line is this, can I go even beyond the bottom line and make sure that my employees are enhanced? People who work with me are achieving the potential of their own lives." That's the kind of work-life balance I think is the challenge for all of us that will far outweigh any of these things that we've been talking about, where individuals are enhanced.
In our Holy Book, there's a verse that always inspires me: "Do everything as unto the Lord." In other words, everything that we do in our workplace, let it be an offering on the altar to the Almighty God. If we look at our work like that, then the potential for excellent work is always on the front burner. If that is the case, then trust is very easily developed and it will be easy to make sure that the people who work with us and around us are completely enhanced to be all that the Almighty God intended for them to be. That's my hope and prayer for each one of you this morning.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God. On each of these precious ones on this call, pour out your wisdom, that they may know how to balance trust and long-term objectives, that they may be able to look at people around them and say, "Am I enhancing them? Am I bringing them to their full potential?" Help us to do everything as an offering to you so that it will be the best possible work that can ever come out of us. I pray a blessing on each one on this call in the name of Jesus. Amen.
• Hubert Joly, CEO BestBuy
Theory X & Y, Douglas McGregor, MIT Sloan School of Management. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y
