Thoughts on Result Oriented Work Environments (ROWE)

Recently a ROWE discussion hit the blogosphere. Especially those, like myself, that are interested in any productivity related topics. ROWE, which seems to originate from a concept that Best Buy has adopted, is essentially about working whenever and from where ever a employee likes. Combined with a strong view on meetings (”Ditch them!”), it seeks to revolutionaries traditional work environments.

With the recent publishing of an interview of Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, who introduced ROWE at Best Buy and now authored the corresponding book “Why work sucks and how to fix it” at the New York Post and the latest twitter consideration of Glen from Lifedev to write an eBook and ROWE, I looked a bit closer into the concept.

While focusing on results only, ROWE applies some fairly bold and generic concepts:

• Work whenever you like (no fixed work schedules)
• Work where ever you like (no need to come to your office cubicle)
• Skip all these time consuming meetings and conference calls, that contribute little to nothing to your results achievement

It becomes pretty obvious that some of the main obstacles for a ROWE is the expressed fear of managers to loose control and the requirement for a large, connected part of the organisation to adopt ROWE in order to make it work in a feasible and recognisable way.

Although I pretty much work in a ROWE already, when it comes to the team I work in, I do see issues with the rest of the large organisation I work for. Like in many cooperations everything is build around meetings and conference call, spiced with a heavy load of daily email. Hence the team I work in is very effective in communication and reduces meetings/calls down to those you effectively need to achieve your results, the rest of the organisation imposes a different culture on your working and communication habits. Making this a consistence experience is maybe on of the toughest parts of a ROWE implementation.

I’ am about to write a series on effective meetings and conference calls, but I do realise that they often serve for more than just discussing (or not discussing) a particular topic. Hence skipping the pareto 80% of them may actually be threatening your career to a certain extend. A good reason to make sure a good and integrated part of an organisation goes ROWE.

The willingness of managers to step up and accept that controlling the schedule and presence of employees does not provide any degree of control regarding the result is a different topic. For some reasons schedules and being at the office is rather important to some people, like myself.

Part of my daily habit is putting my suit on and get to the office. Dressing like work and being at the office just makes me switch to work mode. I do work occasionally from home, would do so more often if I had a dedicated office in my apartment, but I reckon that I’ am less productive with my pyjamas on. There are just too many things that can distract you - which might be somewhat different if you sit in your work dedicated and appropriately setup home office - in a suit or some more work like dress.

So in a ROWE you should not underestimate the desire of people to have a regular schedule and other habits that they can hold on to. Completely free floating might be very challenging and maybe counter-productive.

Furthermore I wonder if ROWE works for all types of people. At Best Buy they have discovered that some under-performers actually improved significantly when using ROWE, but I also suspect that an organisation would have to accept that some individuals may perform poorly or at least their performance becomes more transparent and consequently you will have to turn over part of your work force. Having said this, I acknowledge the economical desire to do so, but at the same time wondering if there is a more ethical or moral aspect to the story.

What are your thoughts on ROWE? How close is your organisation to it?  

The problem of GTD project granularity

So here we go: After using GTD heavily for now nearly 24 months, I just realised that I have misused the term project since the beginning. Not that I read the definition of it again, no, I just got frustrated with some of my projects hanging in there literally forever. So how come?

Essentially I found some of my project mirroring what in standard terms you would indeed call a project. A project in my GTD system equaled a delivery project to a client, another one an larger internal project dealing with a new service delivery model/methodology that I’ am involved in, a third one a large deal which I’ am managing.

So what’s wrong you’d ask. Everything. All of the three examples I’ve given, and I’ am sure you have similar projects yourself, take a very, very long time to close. Anywhere between 3 and 12 months. And whilst other, smaller projects disappear rather quickly from my GTD lists, these guys keep staying.

Not only do they deliver a lot frustation to me by doing so, they also tend to just pile up actions that loose order and more importantly relevance over time. Just as described in a post at tools for thought in an article about ‘Getting unstuck: How to jump start a listless action list‘ you will only find legacy issues in these projects. No only have they lost relevance, they also don’t come in any logical order any more.

Delete these hugh projects

Yep. Just go and delete them. Don’t bother on all those actions in there. They’d be lost and you could not care less. Most of them were legacy, meaningless and irrelevant to the projects success. Those immediate actions related to a particular aspect of that project will come back as soon as you setup a new project for exactly that aspect of the project.

Create tiny little projects

So what is tiny and what is little? Depends on the context. A project such as a client delivery project, an entire marketing campaign, a product development effort are fare too hugh. So tiny means aspects of these projects. Things you are currently doing, not those that might need to be done in 3 months from now.

Even single phases of a typical project life-cycle might be to big for a GTD project. Planning, Analysing, Designing, Implementing, Testing, Rolling-Out could be come impressively large animals each. Hence focus on smaller junks and eat the elephant in pieces:

• Create a GTD project for that one document you need to write, e.g. covering some specifications
• Look at the planning required for the next customer meeting and make a project for that
• Detail out the actions required to deliver the next Executive update
• Understand that you need to do a stakeholder analysis for your internal communication plan for the new product introduction and make a GTD project out of this

One large project = many small GTD projects

Many of these small projects can run in parallel. Some might be on hold for some time, some might get dropped as they loose relevance as the ‘large project’ progresses and e.g. changes scope slightly. But still, you will get your motivation from setting more and more of these small projects to completed.

But do not create all the small GTD projects you think are required throughout the course of the large project. Just those in your line of sight. No artificial ones, e.g. ‘We need to think of this!’

I’ve just delete five or six of my real-business-life/large projects from my GTD project list and created small ones focussing on the next important events or activities of these projects. Each of them does not contain more than 10-15 actions, all well sorted and ordered and I’ am looking forward to check each of those small projects off in like one, two or latest three weeks time. What a relief! 

Visualise the simple way - pen & napkin

Some of you may have already heard or read about the book “Back of the Napkin” by Dan Roam. We all know, that even without any particular skill or talent, we can visualise our thinking with pen and paper, or napkin for the sake of it. Still, Dan applies some nice and interesting concept about this type of visualisation, e.g. how you can use visualisation to actually generate an idea rather than painting up the concept of an idea you already had.

The below video featuring Dan Roam talking about some concepts of his book is actually quite nice since he uses rather simplistic examples to help you understand his concept. Well spend 5 minutes!

I do like visual thinking since it automatically forces you to reduce complexity and focus on the essential parts. However, looking at the “coffee chain strategy”-napkin example that Dan uses, I need to admit that I would not even use a napkin to illustrate something so simple. I assume that it was the early structure for the company’s strategy, but not the strategy itself. Not that I’d suggest that a strategy needs to be more complex - no, it needs to be more unique.

Mass-create GTD reference material A-Z folders in Entourage with AppleScript

Certainly I’ am trying to be organised and effective. And certainly one good starting point for this is to be as lazy as possible. And this was exactly what made me think about how to most effectively create my GTD David Allen like A-Z folders in Entourage for my project reference material/archive.

Entourage is pretty unfriendly when you want to create a high number of folders: It’s all mouse click here - mouse click there. Also the newly created subfolder gets selected, so you need to click back on the top-level folder, get the context menu, select “Create Subfolder” and so on.

I use multiple top-level folders, for example:

• Client Business
• Internal Projects
• Company Internal
• Department Internal
• Company General
• General Reference Material
• Personal
• Private

I also use numbers in front of the names to keep my desired order, e.g. 010 or 020. Anyway, since I needed A-Z folders in these top-level folders, I thought about writing a simple AppleScript to do the job for me. And here it is:

set folder_list to {”A”, “B”, “C”, “D”, “E”, “F”, “G”, “H”, “I”, “J”, “K”, “L”, “M”, “N”, “O”, “P”, “Q”, “R”, “S”, “T”, “U”, “VW”, “XYZ”}
set folder_name to “Tester”
tell application “Microsoft Entourage”
  set theSelection to selection
    if class of theSelection is folder then
       repeat with i from 1 to number of items in the folder_list
          set folder_name to item i of the folder_list
          make new folder with properties {name:folder_name, parent:theSelection}
       end repeat
    else
       display dialog “You need to select a folder in which you want to create the A-Z subfolders before running this script”
    end if
end tell

Download Entourage Mass Reference Material A-Z Folder Creation.scpt

This is how you use it:

1. Select a folder inside Entourage in which you want to create the subfolder - can be any level inbox/root or lower
2. Run the script from the Script Editor or from the Entourage Script Menu

To add this script to the Entourage Script menu by copying to /Users/[username]/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Script Menu Items. To access it with a hotkey add for example “\cM” at the end of the filename to access it via Control+M

If you wish to separate the VW and XYZ folders edit the folder_list.

GTD Evening Routine for OmniFocus

When I recently wrote about my Morning Routine that gives me a great, easy and structured start into the day, I’ve mentioned the need to also have an Evening Routine. The Evening Routine makes sure that you can start the next day with 20 minutes of planning using the Morning Routine. As you would imagine, if you leave a mess at the end of the day, it’ll take you a lot of time cleaning it up the next day. As a consequence you would start out looking backward (to the last day) and the first 60 minutes of your day may also ready yield frustration.

Also the Evening Routine is part of my concept “leave work at work” - it makes sure you have closed the day out and prepare the key elements for the next day. Hence nothing will bug you in the evening when you spend time with your family - no “I need to think of this for tomorrow” or “Gosh, I forgot to send the doc to Anja - need to do this first thing in the morning” or even “Damn, what meetings do I have tomorrow”.

Taking a look at the Evening Routine you will find similarities to the Morning Routine. However, I’ve designed it slightly different since I tend to have less time in the evening. Usually I run a bit late with some tasks, get a phone call in the last minutes or sit in a conference call that takes longer as planned. As a consequence, and primarily to get out of the office and be on time for dinner, I cut down effort in my Evening Routine.

And this is how it looks like:

• Bring Entourage Inbox to Zero: Again Entourage is my mail client of (corporate) choice, it well could be Mail.app or Outlook. And again I’d like to bring it down to Zero at the end of the day which would mean I’ve at least looked at all stuff and created tasks where required. My inbox will fill-up again over night since some of my fellow colleagues may either work late or those in other time zones will take care of populating my inbox again.
• Bring OmniFocus Inbox to Zero: All tasks that accumulated during the day and those creating during my end-of-the-day inbox clean sweep get assigned to a context and/or project - and, if applicable, get some time estimate. Hit “Clean up” in OmniFocus and boom, you’re done.
• Make sure all documents are in the DropBox: The DropBox, my simple file folder for all the stuff that I need to file away as reference or project material should contain all files that I have created/received during the day. No files on the desktop, all attachments from eMails that are important saved away into the DropBox, no clutter! The actual tagging and archiving is something I do in the Morning routine only, since this tends to steal quite some time that I rather use with my kids in the evening.
• Decide on top 3 tasks for next day: As simple as this - I scan my ‘Weekly Focus’-Perspective in OmniFocus (more on this in another post) and tasks that I have created during the day and select the 3 most important tasks to work on the next day. That again does not mean I’ am only processing 3 tasks a day (although this can easily happen and is okay) - but I will make sure I do those three
• Review next day’s calendar: Make sure I know what is cooking next day. An early conference call for which I need to adapt my morning logistics? A customer meeting that required more formal clothing (bring a tie)? A meeting that still needs some preparation (add to the top 3 tasks)? All covered.

Daily Scrubbing with OmniFocus

One of the more challenging things about GTD is to get your daily work done. At least a lot of people I’ve seen fell into the organise and plan trap which gets you focussed on having everything planned, in your lists and trusted systems. But making sure you get your minimum done and your system up-to-date on a daily basis is where the rubber hits the road.

I’ve started using to repeating ‘projects’ in OmniFocus to start and end my day with some level of diligence. My ‘Morning Routine’ is repeating itself daily and is due at 8am, when I’ve typically settled myself in the office, had my go at my news sites, RSS feeds and a bit of email pre-screening.

Let’s look at the individual tasks in my Morning Routine:

• Bring Entourage Inbox to Zero: Following Merlin’s Mann Inbox Zero methodology, the first thing for me is to empty my Entourage Inbox following standard GTD parameters. Less than 2 minute answers, quick delegation, hot-key importing of actionable items to OmniFocus, trash to trash, archive FYI/CC mails.
• Bring OmniFocus Inbox to Zero: After importing all the actionable mail items, I quickly scan through them and make sure each of them has a context, possibly a project and some time associated with it. Hit the “Clean up” button in OmniFocus - done.
• Tag new documents in DropBox: I use a folder called “DropBox” to drop all documents I receive or create throughout the day. Once a day, well, in the morning, I use Leap to tag the documents. This is required by the type of reference material or archiving system I follow which I will cover in a later post.
• Archive documents from DropBox: Moving documents from the DropBox to the appropriate folders in my folder hierarchy
• Review Top 3 actions/agenda for the day: Following some ideas of ZTD by Zen Habits’ Leo I simply scan through all my actions in OmniFocus (pre-flagged for weekly focus) and any meetings/calls scheduled for the day and decide on those 3 that I definitely would like to complete that day.

Surely your morning routine might be different or more comprehsive, but I like to keep it down to the bare minimum and completed in the first 20mins of my working day. So no matter what you need to do, here is how to create the repeating “Morning Routine” project.

Setup a new project by using the “+” button at the bottom of OmniFocus left-panel. Best to keep it on the root-level of the Library as you will constantly refer back to it (ideally daily). You may also use the menu item under “File > Add New Project” or the equivalent keyboard short-cut.

Next give it the “Morning Routine” name and add, in the right sequence, all those actions to it, that you want to complete in the first 20-30mins of your day. I would recommend to not go overboard here, since it is very likely that once your day gets going you will be interrupted by calls, meetings, emails or annoying office fellows and consequently fail to complete your Morning Routine.

Once you have all your actions defined, you need to set the reoccurrence of the project and it’s due time using the Inspector in OmniFocus. If you do not have the Inspector open all the time like myself, use the menu “Inspectors > Show Inspectors” or the equivalent keyboard short-cut.

Next select the project we’ve just created. Make sure you have the “project view” in the Inspector and set the reoccurrence to “Repeat every 1 days”. The due date should be the time you are ready for your morning review - in my case it is 8.30am. In the case you run late with your morning routine make sure you set the “Repeat from” to “Assigned date” so that OmniFocus sticks with 8.30am every morning. Otherwise it might simply set the next due date to the time you’ve managed to complete your morning routine.

That’s it. Pretty simple, but keeps you on track every day. Would be great to see which actions you have in your morning routine. This typically delivers a lot of inspiration for other people.