Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Getting Things Done

Sitting here at my desk, albeit in the offices of a remarkably humane employer, I'm impressed by Best Buy's experiment with clock- and place-free work routines, or ROWE, for "results-only work environment." In short, it doesn't matter if you're in your cubicle, in your car, at your house, or in the woods so long as you get done what you need to get done.

It's remarkable, and judging by this (admittedly boosterish) BusinessWeek article, pretty successful. ROWE has even led one curmudgeonly manager to conclude, "For years I had been focused on the wrong currency. I was always looking to see if people were here. I should have been looking at what they were getting done."