Who of us hasn't heard employees and co-workers murmur, whine, or even holler, "Work sucks!"?

To rally morale as well as results, consider a Results-Only Work Environment (or ROWE). In this environment, people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Work isn't someplace you go to, it is something you do. And it doesn't have to get accomplished from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sound too good to be true?

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, authors of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, successfully led the Corporate Headquarters of Best Buy, a Fortune 100 corporation, through just such a change, which resulted in improved employee satisfaction, increased productivity, lower turnover rates, and greater efficiency.

In the last edition of Brand & Strategy, Ressler and Thompson discussed the benefits of - and the objections to - a Results-Only Work Environment. Click here to read the first interview.

Here Ressler and Thompson share how to face the challenges of adapting to a new work foundation--and why this radical system actually works.

Brand & Strategy: Why deconstruct the old foundation of work?

Ressler and Thompson: The old way doesn't work.

With ROWE, we're setting up a new foundation that actually fits with technology advancements and the demands of people's lives in the 21st Century. The rules, guidelines, and processes in office environments today are relics of the 1950s. We're holding onto them hard and fast, at the cost of people's health, families breaking apart, stagnant business results, etc.

And for what? To ensure that people are following the rules and we can keep the paternalistic leadership structure in place.

Time to break it apart and create the new game.

How have organizations with paternalistic leadership responded to your "13 Guideposts for a Results-Only Work Environment" (see sidebar)?

Upper management generally freaks out. And rightly so: the Guideposts were created to intentionally provoke this response. The statements are extreme and buck the status quo like nothing management in Corporate America has ever seen.

We like to say that ROWE is the litmus test for leadership in organizations. They've been talking until they're blue in the face about how much they trust employees, want to support their work/life balance, set the right foundation for them to innovate, and on and on. Then when ROWE and the 13 Guideposts come at them, they back down and say they're "not ready."

It's about "walking your talk"--and most leaders aren't up for the challenge.

Who is up to the challenge?

It takes a strong, courageous, progressive leader to say yes to ROWE and the 13 Guideposts. We're working with some of them now, and we know there are more out there. And they will be the leaders of the future.

Why doesn't ROWE work for some organizations?

Anxiety and fear.

During the process of converting to ROWE it is possible for leadership to make the decision to not move forward. They let their anxiety about giving employees autonomy get the best of them, and they call everything off. This is a very poor decision.

Why?

The message to employees is loud and clear: "I don't trust you." Once employees know about ROWE and that they're moving toward this liberation and freedom, you can't rip the rug out from beneath them without serious consequences.

It can be extremely detrimental to morale, productivity, and ultimately the bottom line for a company.

However, for those teams that commit to the entire ROWE process and fully embrace it, there's no going back to the old way. Brains are rewired, and it would decrease productivity to return to the old way.

How long does it take for an organization to adapt to ROWE?

The process for this adaptive change is very important. Each step is carefully timed to allow the culture to evolve at the right pace. Going too fast or too slow can have significant ramifications on the work environment and productivity.

So the timeline for this change really depends on the size of the organization.

Organizations of less than 100 employees can go through the ROWE migration process in two months. Organizations of 500 employees can go through the process in about four months. Larger organizations take an approach where they go department by department; it can take between a year and three years for organizations of 1,000 or more to go through the process.

Once teams have gone through the change strategy, it can take anywhere from 6 months to 18 months for individuals to feel like they are "ROWE."

You talk about "Sludge" - the caustic comments made by coworkers when you walk in late or skip a meeting that reinforce old ideas about how work gets done. How do you eradicate Sludge?

The biggest hurdle to eradicating Sludge is actually fighting the internal Sludge we all have.

Surprisingly, the Sludge that exists among employees - "Can you believe John came in at 10:00 this morning?" or "There goes Nancy to pick up her sick kid - wish I had a kid!" - is the first to leave the environment as we implement the Environmental Sludge Eradication Strategy.

The Sludge that lingers feeds off the internal guilt people have about the way they should be working, where they should be at certain times of the day, and how they should be letting co-workers know where/when they're working. We call this "should-ing on yourself."

Why do we hold on to this "should-ing"?

Because of the years and years of work beliefs that have been drilled into us, it's very uncomfortable to behave in a way that's counter-culture. To go grocery shopping on a Tuesday morning goes against everything we've learned about how work needs to happen. To leave the office at 2:15 p.m. and not tell anyone is scary to most people. To sleep in and intentionally skip rush hour traffic (and not tell anyone) is very odd.

The internal Sludge of "I should be working right now" or "I should tell someone where I am right now" goes away slowly, but it takes time.