Yesterday, I read Anne Zelenka’s post on ROWE at Best Buy. I was heartened to see that this idea was getting mentioned again, and that it was getting front-page interest from Big Media.
On a lark, I forwarded the post to my director and VP. Their responses frightened me. They were written in management-ese, and indicated that timesheets are soon to be added to my daily routine.
Hugh Mcleod — Sheep/Wolf
I can help cure the first, starting with Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, and George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.
The second plague, timesheets, I see as more odious. It goes along with the new measurement-focused management culture in our company. Sometimes, I wonder what’s more important to the managers and executives: measurements or results.
As a person who is difficult enough to manage due to my bipolar, and my deep-rooted desire to do things that have meaning, timesheets are a problem for me. I don’t work to timesheets; I work to goals.
Structured environments have always been a serious problem for me. They trigger a deep resentment, some deep rooted need in my soul not to conform. I know that they serve a purpose, and that some people take a great deal of comfort in the process of knowing how they spent their day. My comfort comes from delivering meaningful results, not in worshipping the almighty bureaucracy.
I suppose that as the company I work for grows and has more people to manage, timesheets are inevitable. However, it’s about the time that timesheets appear that I feel the need to find more results-oriented, dynamic organizations.
Timesheets are a sign of corporate doublespeak, freeing people from the need to excel.
Technorati Tags: work, management, timesheets, bipolar, sheep/wolf, gapingvoid, Web+Worker+Daily, Anne+Zelenka
