I’ll pin that on the leaders, or lack of leadership you find in most organizations. Weak leadership isn’t going to be successful with ROWE or Six Sigma or any approach.

Lean teaches people to focus on the process… then the results will follow. “Do whatever it takes to get the job done” is not the Lean way, because we need some semblance of what we call “standardized work” (which should not be misinterpreted as being robotic or overly prescriptive or inflexible).

I’ve found most organizations are basically “results only” focused – they ignore process and, therefore, the results are terrible.

I can’t really endorse “results only” although some of the aspects of ROWE certainly seem better than traditional management.

FWIW, your thoughts have been voiced by others, too. I think Mark Hamel & Mark Graban have both commented that Lean derives consistent, high quality results through consistent, high quality inputs & processes. There is a danger that focusing just on the results can create individual “panics” as people try to acheive targets, or a constant off-loading of all work onto high performers without any effort to understand systemic problems causing low performers to struggle. This is an area where I certainly see elements of Lean improving the ROWE concept.

B-I-N-G-O

And that is why I have started this investigation into what ROWE & Lean can do for each other. When I read the “Work Sucks” book, it seemed like a profound deep dive into how to create the culture change that seems so elusive. It appeared to address the culture change problems that remain elusive for any approach to transition an organization – Lean included.

Most organizations experience “Fake Lean” or “LAME” – which is the first problem. Does True Lean embrace culture change? From what I understand, absolutely. (and I admit, I am much more theorist than practitioner)
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that most Lean journeys ever arrive at that culture change. Tools are introduced in the hopes that momentum is sustained long enough to transform the culture, but it rarely gets to that point and Lean initiatives flounder.

So, I see ROWE’s focus on culture change first and I wonder if there’s an opportunity to accomplish 2 things: 1) Address a shortcoming in Lean’s ability to get to culture change, and 2) address ROWE’s shortcoming in that it doesn’t have a defined method for sustaining performance.

Obviously, if the culture doesn’t improve, the performance suffers. If the performance doesn’t improve, any attempt at culture change will be abandoned, too. If, as I believe, these two approaches represent the best ideas from their areas of relative strength (Culture Change and Process Improvement, then it seems worth exploring how they can be combined.

One conflict I see is the ROWE seems to focus on results only and not how the results were gained. Lean is a focus on not just results but how the results were achieved, so the process can be repeated with the same results being gained. No standardization means no baseline to improve from either. I believe you should not standardized everything and there are situations where individualism can work. The key is understanding both and when to use them in a mixed ROWE/Lean environment.

But one would be a fool to actually pull the cord in an environment that says “keep the line running at all costs!”

http://www.leanblog.org/2007/02/bbc-on-lean-production/

I think culture and team environment comes first and that’s necessary for individuals to thrive.

One of the things I struggle with is how to apply ROWE in a manufacturing setting. My example isn’t particularly robust and might be a bit too optimistic? I suppose I could say that, if people understood how the company benefited from having the day’s production requirements filled, they would do what was needed to fulfill them. Assuming workers have skills necessary to do the work, little management oversight would be needed to watch over them – they’d do the work without prodding or incentives because of their innate desire to achieve the goal.

Maybe a bit too much rose-colored glasses to be realistic. Nonetheless, I have this feeling in my gut that the heavily people-centered aspects of ROWE “should” align with Lean, at least in theory. Still trying to prove out that they do.

I wanted to investigate ROWE because I believe individual responsibility comes first and team work second. I think individual responsibility is what makes people willing to engage and willing to be ready and willing to pull the Andon chord. Just my take.

It seems that ROWE would work best for people with individual quotas – like salespeople. Even then, we could question if individual quotas are really more harmful than good (I believe Dr. Deming’s argument that they are).

It seems ROWE has to be tied to team goals incentives to avoid some of the dysfunctions that could occur.