We sat down and had a conversation with our good friend Jeff Herzberg at Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency (PLAEA) about ROWE and education. We trained PLAEA’s pilot team through a Beyond Telework Workshop and recently brought selected PLAEA employees through our Training Certification program. Those certified internal trainers will now lead the entire agency into a ROWE! PLAEA is an organization that assists over 33,000 students and supports 3,500 educators and 200 administrators in central Iowa. Some of Jeff’s stories are going to be featured in the new book, Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It, so we wanted to share some of that conversation with all of you today.
I’ve been really pleased and surprised with how ROWE has resonated with educators and the effort to not just reform education, but reimagine it, as Jeff says in the interview.
Below is part of our conversation with Jeff and a clip of the interview, which you can watch in full here if you’re interested in learning more. And of course you can pre-order your copy of Why Managing Sucks to read more about ROWE in education. We’re really excited about Jeff’s chapter!
Cali: What made you crazy enough to be the Results-Only Work Enviornment pioneer in education?
Jeff: Besides the fact that you two were so convincing, after we read the book and had some conversation, it just made sense. School is not working for everyone, everyone knows it but no one was willing to do anything about it. I knew it was the right thing to do and just went right ahead.
Jody: Teachers can’t be ROWE! What do you say when people push back?
Jeff: Is what we’re doing working today with all kids? If we’re all honest and willing to risk saying it, then the answer is: Absolutely not, it’s not working for today’s kids. Everyone is working so hard–parents, teachers, kids, administration. The system’s broken. It doesn’t need reforming, but reinventing.
Cali: Companies are freaked out about being first in their industry, when it comes to big changes like ROWE. What has changed for you?
Jeff: In Iowa, we got rid of seat time. We don’t want to focus on time as the constant. We want to make extended, high-quality learning the constant. Our current system worked 100 years ago when we were preparing kids for assembly lines. We’re moving toward competency-based education.
Jody: What were some of the challenges to adopting ROWE?
Jeff: We’re still experiencing them as we expand from our 50-person pilot to implementing throughout the agency of 240 employees. The big question is, how do we define results that we’ll be held accountable for? I want to shoot for something bigger than standardized test scores. Look at the big picture, not just all the activities that we’re doing. Like your new book says, we want to manage the work, not the people.
Our showstopper when people challenge what we’re doing is to say: “You don’t want to focus on results?”
Cali: Do people look at you like you’re crazy?
Jeff: People are polite and say “That’s nice” and they stand back and see if it’s going to work for us.
For the first time in my career we’re getting to have multiple conversations about employees really talking about the work. There’s a lot of excitement internally, but some fear like “what if it doesn’t work?”
Cali: It’s about waking people up to be accountable and really own the job.
Jeff: Most people want to be accountable and responsible. Recent Gallup study: only 11% of workers report being “engaged” in their work. If education workers are following that trend, well no wonder we’re not getting good outcomes! We’re talking about unleashing the potential of our employees. Stop doing things that are a waste of time, and start doing things that will really have an impact.
This article was originally posted on ROWE on November 11, 2012. Reprinted with permission.
About the Authors: Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson are the Founders of CultureRx and creators of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). Their first book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, was named “The Year’s Best Book on Work-Life Balance” by Business Week. They have been featured on the covers of BusinessWeek, Workforce Management Magazine, HR Magazine, Hybrid Mom Magazine, as well as in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, USA Today, and on Good Morning America, CNBC and CNN.
