Best Buy’s Corporate Genius or Corporate Anarchy?
I am really loving BusinessWeek lately (thanks for the subscription Grandpa).
This week they take a look at an emerging revolution in the corporate culture at Best Buy. Imagine this – no schedule, no required meetings, no need to even go to work. Imagine a job where you are only judged by work performance, not hours in your chair. Pretty hard to imagine, eh?
Well, that’s how they are rolling in some departments at Best Buy corporate…and they are seeing some amazing results, including huge gains in productivity, reduction in voluntary turnover and increases in job satisfaction.
Best of all, this all happened subversively within the organization. The two HR masterminds behind this program (known as ROWE), decided their experiment would never work if they tried to get permission first, decided not to. Now the program is picking up steam and has gotten the support of many of its biggest critics... and even the CEO.
Not surprisingly, all of this makes Tom Peters squeal like a little schoolgirl.
Sorry Tom…don’t kick my ass.