REVIEW: “Funky office. The Remote Work Manifesto, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

When you see the title of the book, you, dear readers, will exclaim: "Ahh, another book on flexible schedules and bicycles in offices!" And you will be wrong. The book, written by two female managers working at Best Buy, does not talk about how cool it is for bank employees to come to the office on Fridays in jeans, and sales managers at Microsoft work once a week from a cafe 2 blocks from the office on their tablets with Windows 8. Here in general there is not a single line about the corporate bullshit that newbies and seasoned employees are “forced” under the guise of “flexible hours and career opportunities.” Instead, 250 pages of case studies and step-by-step system implementation will be on your desk. ROWE - "result-oriented work." What would you say if you learned that you can come to work whenever you want and leave when you want, and the “40-hour week rule” would be forever buried in the crypts of corporate archives? Do you think this does not happen? Then it's time for you to start reading.

About the book

I prefer the original title of the book by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson: “Why work sucks and how to fix it” - but in the Russian publishing house of business literature "MYTH", through whose efforts the book, apparently, considered such a title too straightforward and harsh for the domestic ear. It is not surprising: if 80% of the ideas presented in the book are implemented in domestic companies, then this implementation will take place with a "battle", where on one side of the barricades there will be Adults and Common Sense, and on the other side - the Big Boss and Corporate Rules.

There are no diagrams and illustrations in the book, but there are 8 stories of managers with different skill levels, different experiences and different problems and ages. These are the stories of managers and employees of Best Buy, which has become a leader in the e-commerce segment, despite the fact that today the overwhelming majority of its employees work on the basis of the Result Only Work Environment - an environment where results and timely completion of tasks play a decisive role, rather than number. hours worked. For example, you will learn why “owls” and “larks” can work equally productively in a modern corporation, even if one arrives at the office by 8 am and the second by 3 pm. for a sick mother, move to another state - and at the same time overfulfill all work plans, although in a stable “traditional” company he would be fired as soon as he needed to move. Or how at 30 you can pay attention to yourself and your family every day, and not just “enjoy” a small increase in your salary once every six months and vacation for 14 days once a year.

Funky Office Lessons

1. The changed reality of business itself is pushing us to measure performance. of each employee, department, or the entire team in the company, and not the number of hours spent in the office. Are you competing for the Iron Ass of the Month title? Or do you still want the work to have a result?

2. ROWE can (and should) be applied as the foundation of modern management … To refer to “disorganization” and to the fact that “it doesn't work that way” is potentially not trusting the people who work with or for you. If you don't trust them, why then do they work for you at all?

3. Meetings are a universal corporate "toxin", which kills time, nerves and gives nothing but the endless transfusion of "water" and the potential exchange of negativity in search of the "extreme." Do you continue to roam the meeting rooms and gather people there so that they can be distracted from real work for 2-3 hours a day?

4. "Office dregs" (gossip, jokes, intrigues, search for "extreme" and tracking whoever comes / leaves) has become a way of self-justification in 90% of companies and masking personal work inefficiencies. Do you keep "spying" on how your colleagues are doing instead of going about your business?

5. ROWE allows you to be effective even to those who, in the traditional model of work, would often have to take vacations or even quit altogether. Do you continue to "disperse" people who did not want to become "office hamsters," or do you still evaluate the results, and not the presence in the work "cage"?

6. "Work is war": this postulate is doomed to extinctionsince no one else wants to die from a heart attack at 30 and from alcoholism due to work stresses at 40.

7. Time is your asset and only yours; no one has the right to blame you for how you build your working day and why you manage to complete all your tasks in 4 hours, not 8.

8. ROWE is not suitable only for the dead and for those who are "tightly" sat down in an office chairto dial at least 40 hours in 5 days.

Who should you read?

Management: top-, middle-, and generally all kinds of managers - especially IT companies, web projects and non-material areas of activity. Read to "quit" the silly questions "Why did you leave so early / came late?" and not to award the title of "Best Employee of the Month" on the basis of the largest number of meetings held and "sit up" until 23:00.

Employees: to understand that "we are not slaves, slaves are not us." You have the right to live and be treated as professionals and adults. If your boss thinks that the most important thing is to turn off social networks at work, set up a time tracking system and force everyone to gather in the meeting room at least once every 2 days, then it's time for you to look for a new boss and a new, adequate place of work. The times of the planned economy and "hard hourly" in the non-material sphere ended in 2008, when this book began to be created.

People who are temporarily not working / preparing to come to their first job in the company: so as not to fall for the sweet tales of "flexible scheduling" and "the future." The company only has one future: what will happen to you in the workplace tomorrow. If tomorrow (like yesterday, like the day after tomorrow, and in general always) your boss is waiting for you, discontentedly glancing at the clock and the system of “de-bonuses” for every “sneeze” and every minute of time “not spent” in the office, maybe you don’t need such a job?

The book is excellent, accessible in a manner of presentation, with fairly simple ideas and clearly pretending to be in almost any corporate library.