If you can’t view the video here on the screen, the original link to the video is here.

This seems to be a TED week for me.

I was reminded of a talk I had listened to a few months back that really helped strengthen my resolve on why I believe the threat of getting fired is the worse way to encourage employees to be productive.

In the video above, Dan Pink talks about the science of motivation and how the carrot stick approach that most businesses are using to encourage productivity is becoming less effective as businesses rely on creativity and ingenuity to make progress.

He gives an example of a company that encourages Results Only Work Environments (ROWE) in which employees are free to do whatever they want as long as they get the job done.

He states that this approach has proven to do more for boosting productivity and ingenuity and uses a comparison between Encarta and Wikipedia as an example of what can happen when you put the carrot stick approach up against the ROWE.

The reason why this video excites me so much is because the ROWE approach just by its very definition is saying that by letting your employees choose where, when and how they work as long as they get the job done (and you pay them fairly as well), your business will become better.

He strengthens his case with real life examples of business’s and the results of experiments conducted by notable scientists and economists.

If you are a manager, team leader or anyone who is in a position of authority, it would do you well to watch the video above if you’re still using the carrot and stick approach to motivate the people under you.

Obviously there is more to ROWE than simply just letting your employees run free, however there are merits to the approach that I know from personal experience are worth exploring and applying.

No related posts.

photo credit: CarbonNYC

When it comes to your job, there are basically two things that will keep you from getting the flexibility you want:

1. How much negotiating leverage you have on your side
2. How afraid you are to ask for it

It’s all well and good if your company values you and you are confident that you have enough leverage that you are sure they wouldn’t fire you if you asked for what you wanted (namely a telecommuting position or more flexible work hours).

“But what if this doesn’t work? “

At the end of the day, no matter what cards you hold in your hands, if you don’t have another income option in the worse case scenario, you are basically making a gamble on your financial stability.

“What if they decide they would rather let you go than give you what you want. What then?”

Just this thought alone is enough to hold people back from taking the steps necessary to negotiate greater flexibility in their jobs. It definitely almost stopped me.

Before you go into your boss’s office to ask for greater work flexibility, it is a good idea to have a plan B.

For me, plan B was to get a part-time job or even to go back into freelancing.

I already had a few contacts and a person who I could reliably go to for work in case I somehow lost my job.

It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but at least I knew that in the end I would be able to pay the bills and feed myself.

Knowing that I would be able to support myself in the worse case scenario and knowing that I had leverage to negotiate gave me the confidence to ask for what I wanted in my current job.

Plus, I was at a point in my mind where I was determined to pursue my goal of becoming self employed or to have my own business, so it didn’t matter to me too greatly what job I had as long as it gave me enough income and more importantly, time to pursue it.

Being able to get a job that gave me time and work experience that was relevant to work and projects I wanted to do was an extra bonus.

So if you know that you have leverage to ask for what you want but are scared to do so because you freak out at the idea of losing your job, you need to think of your plan B.

If you know that you already have valid arguments to ask for greater work flexibility but are still holding back from making the move to ask, answering the following question just might help push you over the edge to go ahead and ask:

“What do you think you would do for money if you lost you job tomorrow?”

Related posts:

1. OEB 8 | Plan A: Negotiating a Flexible Work Arrangement
2. What Is A Telecommuting Job?
3. Introduction to The Insider’s Guide To Becoming A Teleworker

photo credit: Amy Loves Yah

I recently came across an interview about a man who escaped his office in the USA and now works remotely from his home in Italy.

From reading the interview, I gathered that there was one main factor that led to his decision to finally escape.

For the man in the story above, he tried to deny his feelings for years and years until one day he just couldn’t take it anymore.

His feeling of dissatisfaction for not going after his dream overcame his negative associations with potentially not having a job and this motivated him to take action.

Massive Action Comes From Strong Dissatisfaction

If you think about the times in your life about when you took massive action to make a change, you might notice that it was motivated by a strong sense of dissatisfaction.

For example, maybe you’d been trying to avoid fixing the blockage in the toilet in your house for some time.

You didn’t want to spend the money and there was more than one toilet in the house.

As such, you didn’t consider it an urgent issue to get the broken one fixed.

One day though, someone in your household forgets that the toilet is broken and decides to take a dump in it.

You try pouring a bucket of water into the toilet to “flush” it manually, but this just causes the contents of the toilet to overflow onto the bathroom floor.

Now you have a blocked, overflowed toilet and crap all over your bathroom.

You finally decide to call the plumber to get the toilet fixed.

How To Increase Your Dissatisfaction To Motivate Action

People who are usually successful at escaping the office tend to reach a breaking point that pushes them to take action.

That being said, you don’t have to wait until the whole situation has reached breaking point before you decide to do anything about changing it.

As human beings, we have the ability to imagine the potential negative consequences of not taking action.

On the flip side, we also have the ability to imagine the potential positive consequences of taking action.

Either one of these methods has the ability to disturb us enough that we feel driven to make a change from our current situation in order to move away from a potential bad situation or to move towards a potentially better one.

The fact is, if you’re not dissatisfied enough with your present situation, you aren’t going to do anything to change it.

Related posts:

1. Exercise 4.4: Dealing with Negative Self Talk
2. Step 4: Overcoming fear and believing in yourself

photo credit: lissalou66

Whether you are a boss or just another employee, many people would agree that the ideal employee would possess the following characteristics:

• Displays results and not busyness
• Highly effective and can complete important tasks quickly
• Highly independent and can work alone or with minimal outside assistance
• Is a problem solver due to needing to work alone most of the time
• Is mobile and can work from virtually anywhere with a laptop and high speed internet
• Can carry out tasks effectively with minimal back and forth communication
• Driven to complete work quickly whilst maintaining quality

In order to become an effective full time teleworker, these are the characteristics you will need to possess. Note that I said effective; a lot of people could become full time teleworkers with some courage and discipline.

However, you will want to maximize your performance as a teleworker in order maximize your free time. To do this, you will need to try to possess as many of the above characteristics as you can.

If some of you are freaking out at this point, don’t. Becoming effective is easier than it sounds and is a process of eliminating and streamlining tasks so that you end up doing much LESS than what you are already doing.

In order to achieve the above characteristics, you only need to remember the following whenever you are working on a task:

• Focus only on the important task in front of you, performing it in the fastest way possible from start to finish without distraction, without sacrificing acceptable quality

Think of the teleworker as being a specialist employee, like a commando in the army. They are working entirely alone most of the time, must be capable of solving problems and making decisions on the fly and ultimately be able to complete a mission successfully all on their own without backup.

Now imagine if your company consisted of army of commandos as opposed to a company of regular foot soldiers. Imagine if you pit them against one another, who do you think would win?

Envision this scenario:

All the employees in your company are working on their laptops. All of a sudden, an explosion occurs and the building is suddenly on the verge of collapse. Everyone begins running out of the building with laptops in hand and they sit on the lawn while they watch the building that was once their company crumble to the ground.

Luckily for the CEO, about two months prior he took the initiative to implement a virtual working infrastructure in order to prepare the company for such an event. The server which resided in the company walls was now backed up on a secure external server. All employeeshad been given laptops that had VPN access allowing the access the server anywhere at any time.

Whilst the company may have lost a lot of chairs, tables and printers, the company’s core infrastructure was still intact allowing the employees to continue working even though the company had literally gone boom.

Managers who know how to manage virtual teams would quickly get their teams back up and running to handle the crisis whilst core independently running sections of the organization would know precisely what each of them needed to do in order to get back up and running.

The teleworker is a specialist who knows the ins and outs of their work to complete it in the best and fastest way possible, is able to handle problems and crisis’s independently and can communicate effectively with their key team members.

If you’re not a teleworker, you should become one.

Related posts:

1. Introduction to The Insider’s Guide To Becoming A Teleworker
2. Step 1: Becoming a Fast, Effective and Independent Employee
3. Exercise 2.3: Let them know the pain of your absence

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

~Oscar Wilde

“There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.”

~George Santayana

After going through these exercises, you might be thinking, “Sure, it all sounds good, but I’m still not convinced I can pull this off.”

While going through the exercises and applying the principles, you may find that you don’t actually want to leave the office. You just want to be happier.

While full time teleworking agreements may not feel possible to many people, I can promise you that if you just start to apply some of the principles in this book, your situation at work and in your life will improve substantially.

As you begin to see results, I believe that you will come up with your own conclusions as to what is possible in terms of your work and how you choose to live your life.

To summarize the main principles in this series, the three things that you need to remember in work and in whatever else you do are these:

1. Become effective
2. Increase your value
3. Ask for what you want

Life is not all about working, and neither is it about having all the free time in the world. For me, life is about doing things that allow you to grow and discover more about yourself before you finally kick the bucket.

The purpose of this series is not simply to teach you how to escape the office. The true purpose of this series is to teach you how to create the time you need so you can figure out what it is that you actually want to achieve before your time on this planet runs out.

For some it might just be to have a stable job to support their family and live comfortably. For others, it could be travelling around the world and experiencing everything this life has to offer.

It is time for you to do your own thinking and decide the rules upon which you wish to live your life. Question everything, and if it doesn’t make sense, ask yourself why. Don’t be afraid to be different and don’t be afraid to go after the things that you truly believe in.

You have the choice to live out the rest of your days unhappily and in fear, or you could ask yourself, “What is the worst that could happen?” and just go for it.

I’ll leave you with a quote which I frequently refer to and try to apply whenever I’m faced with a situation which doesn’t sit right with me for whatever reason.

It has guided me through many difficult situations and taught me that usually if my heart is telling me something is wrong I should; in the words of Sister Mary Clarence, “Wake up and pay attention!”

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

~Buddha

Related posts:

1. Introduction to The Insider’s Guide To Becoming A Teleworker
2. Step 5: Approaching your boss: Asking to Telework
3. Exercise 5.1: What to prepare before asking for permission

If you’ve managed to get a teleworking agreement and you’re finally free of the office, congratulations. There are however a few more hurdles that you are going to need to overcome and this section will help you prepare yourself for when they occur.

I’ve discovered several issues that creep up during extended teleworking that aren’t necessarily noticeable during trials. During trials, you still feel a certain level of connectedness to the office which doesn’t make the long term effects of teleworking apparent.

In this section I will cover a few of the problems I’ve faced and how I’ve managed to solve them. The acronym for the 3 main issues is R.I.P (clever aye), and for good reason if you don’t take heed.

1. Relaxation  It is also important to separate the areas which you work and relax to maintain a psychological separation of the two. Working and relaxing in the same area can cause you to feel stressed when you should be relaxing and vice-versa. This doesn’t apply in all cases, but remember this if it happens to you.

   Also, try to make it a point to change to work clothes or at least get out of your pajamas when you get up in the morning and plan to work. This helps you to get into a working frame of mind.

   The problem with feeling too relaxed when you’re trying to work is just that, you feel too relaxed. If your office is in your bedroom and you constantly find yourself lying down, then you might need to move your work station elsewhere.

2. Isolation  Better yet, take your work out with you and do it in a café or at the park. This helps remind you that there is still a world outside of your home and reduces the chances of you getting depressed.

   Call up friends bound to 9 to 5 during lunch and head down to meet them or join a gym and go there every day. Social interaction is something you need to do, especially if you suddenly find yourself constantly talking to yourself.

   Leave your house at least once a day, preferably while the sun is still out. Working alone can promote feelings of isolation, so if you don’t have a family at home or people who you can interact with, go outside for a walk or to a mall to be around people.

3. Procrastination  Set your weekly work benchmark and finish all your work before doing anything else. If you have the fear that once you finish your work you will be loaded with more work and won’t have any extra time during the week, then push the additional work to next week’s agenda.

   Once you hit your benchmark, stop, take a breather, and continue with work the following week. There’s no point in doing more work than necessary if you’re going to be unhappy.

   The only exception to this rule is if your company request something that really MUST been done and cannot be delayed, else the company suffer impending death and destruction. If you did your job of streamlining your work process and the people around you, these occasions would be rare, so relax.

   That’s right, after all your hard work in the office this is the number one thing you need to watch out for once you work from home. Knowing you have the ability to finish your work quickly does not mean you should leave it until the last minute.

Related posts:

1. Step 6: Post-Office and potential problems
2. Exercise 3.2: Testing your Full Time Teleworking ability
3. Exercise 3.1: Testing your Part-Time Teleworking ability

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts”

~ Bertrand Russell

If you’ve managed to get a teleworking agreement and you’re finally free of the office, congratulations. There are however a few more hurdles that you are going to need to overcome and this section will help you prepare yourself for when they occur.

I’ve discovered several issues that creep up during extended teleworking that aren’t necessarily noticeable during trials. During trials, you still feel a certain level of connectedness to the office which doesn’t make the long term effects of teleworking apparent.

Exercise 6.1: Common teleworking problems and solutions

Final Words

Related posts:

1. Exercise 6.1: Common teleworking problems and solutions
2. Step 5: Approaching your boss: Asking to Telework
3. Exercise 3.2: Testing your Full Time Teleworking ability

Once you feel you’ve almost managed to convince your boss, he might need an extra push to be convinced that there is no risk to the company or him.

To put his mind at rest, suggest that you be allowed to do it on a trial basis for anywhere between 2 weeks to a month and let him reassess you once the trial period is over.

If at the end of the trial you don’t meet performance standards, then he has the right to revoke your teleworking rights.

At this stage, you are putting all the pressure on yourself to perform and any failure of the teleworking agreement will be your own.

If you boss accepts this, pack your stuff and head on home.

Related posts:

1. Exercise 5.1: What to prepare before asking for permission
2. Step 5: Approaching your boss: Asking to Telework
3. Exercise 3.1: Testing your Part-Time Teleworking ability

Here is a list of some of the things you should have before approaching your boss:

1. Proof of increased productivity You need to show your boss that it makes more sense to telework than it does to work in the office. One of the strongest reasons you can give is an increase in productivity outside of the office.

   How you will collect this evidence is completely up to you, however I would recommend using progress reports with dates of when you might have been working away from the office.

2. Proof of teleworking ability

   This will be shown in progress reports that show sustained or improved productivity while you are reportedly away from the office. You may also point out situations or problems that you managed to handle successfully (and quickly) while working remotely.

3. Clear reasons why productivity is increased away from the office

   On reporting improved productivity, you also need to state why you were more productive. Reasons can include being at home where you are more relaxed, have more space to work, good lighting and perhaps an additional monitor or two to work. These are all good reasons for recognizing improved productivity.

   If you have a boss who is so unreasonable that he insists that you are making it up, I would recommend doing more research to find actual scientific statistics showing how all the reasons you have given indicate that they actually do improve productivity in workers.

   At this stage, it is also important to state your personal reasons if you have any. These reasons may include feeling happier with the flexible time and feeling more relaxed. If you have already been noted as a good employee then expressing personal fulfillment will be taken seriously by your boss.

4. Any other reasons you can think of

•  Saving time on commute, not having to spend an hour or more each day traveling back and forth from office which allows you to work more
• More time to spend with family and kids, especially if you have a spouse who also works
• Improved cost savings on petrol and car maintenance in the long run
• Reduced risk of getting into a car accident (if you drive long distance)
• Reduced costs on company for floor space and electricity
• Reduction of carbon footprint for both you and the company by using less power and travelling less

Most bosses fear the same thing with teleworkers, and that is a deterioration of communication and ability to manage. If this is a fear your boss has, explain to them how you overcame these issues during your trials. Also state that in emergencies, you may come into the office and also state how in the past, emergencies rarely occur and that you have developed remote solutions to deal with most difficult situations when they occur.

Sometimes the best way to lead into a conversation is with a question. Instead of asking for the opportunity to telework, try asking if the company has any existing policies on teleworking.

This allows you to get a better overview of the teleworking situation in your company and allows you to adjust your arguments accordingly.

If you feel that your boss will instantly jump the gun and say there is no way in hell you’ll be allowed to telework at all, ask him to hear you out. At this stage, you need to be prepared to either quit or get fired.

A point of note, employers (in most countries) cannot fire you without a good reason.

They especially cannot fire you if you are trying to propose ideas that allow you to improve the productivity of the company.

If the boss sees through your plan, and is only bent on refusing you simply to make you unhappy, you have 2 options:

1. Quit
2. Take your case to a higher authority in your company who will see your point and recognizes that your boss is being illogical and unreasonable

Some of you might be thinking that you dare not do anything to make your boss look bad by going over their head. The truth is this can be a real possibility if they choose to be unreasonable.

At times like this, you will need to reassess your reasons for wanting out of the office, and ask yourself what you are willing to do in order to achieve that goal.

Remember, everything you would have worked on up to now is to prevent yourself from getting fired or having to quit, even if you make requests that require your boss or superiors to go out on a limb a little bit.

You are a commando, not a foot soldier. You are a specialist with special training and skills that gets the job done, has the wage that is the same or slightly higher than the average foot soldier and is not easily replaced.

Related posts:

1. Exercise 5.2: Closing the deal : Making it risk free
2. Step 5: Approaching your boss: Asking to Telework
3. Exercise 4.3: Role Playing to Overcome Situational Fears

“I disapprove of what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it.”

~Voltaire

Before asking for a full time teleworking agreement, make sure that you have covered the following bases:

1. You have shown slightly above average productivity in house and are considered an effective employee
2. You have a high perceived value to your company
3. You have come up with remote solutions to all items that could call you back to the office
4. You have shown increased productivity while working remotely and have evidence to back it up

If you are able to tick off all of the above items, you can consider yourself ready to request a remote working arrangement.

If you are generally afraid of your boss, let us redefine the word “Boss” so that you can see a boss for what they truly are:

Boss = A person who is getting paid more than you but is trapped in the office. A person who is highly stressed because they needs to manage multiple things and keep an eye on the activities of the people under their charge. A person who usually has less of a life than you do because they spend much more time working and worrying even when out of the office. A person who is so caught up with work and is so far gone in their career that they cannot even imagine other possibilities outside of the workplace.

Now that you have identified the animal that is your boss, you see that there is nothing glamorous about being a boss other than the fact that they are getting paid more. Money is great, but if you have to trade time and peace of mind to achieve it, it does lose its value.

Also, do not trick yourself into thinking that they get more respect because of their position. If the only reason you strive for a high position in a company is get respect, you are obviously a person who needs to spend some time on self reflection and learn to respect yourself despite your position or financial condition.

Moving on…

So now you know what your boss truly is. Hopefully by following the advice in the previous section on assertiveness, this has helped you reduce your fear. If not, then just imagine your boss naked when you go in to see them.

Before you approach them though, you are going to need a good list of reasons that will compel them to think that letting you work remotely is a good idea. Below is a list of reasons that I was prepared to use (some of which I did use) when I requested a teleworking agreement:

1. I’ll be able to save time commuting back and forth from work
2. I do most of my primary communication via email and phone
3. I’ll still be doing the same amount of work in the week, and you will know my progress as I will report to you every following Monday with completed work
4. I will come in to work every Monday and when needed. These include meetings, training, and information gathering that I can usually deal with when I come in on Monday to report on work progress and also prepare for the coming week.
5. I will be able to attend self paid training that is only available during the day and still complete my work tasks later in the day during non-office hours. This allows the company to save money on furniture and equipment for me, save space that can be utilized for other employees, reduce running costs of electricity
6. If ever there is an emergency that requires my physical presence or if there is an occasion where I need to be physically present for the job to be done, I can easily come into the office
7. I have better equipment at home, a desktop PC and Laptop fully loaded with appropriate software, High speed internet connection and a dedicated work space that I used for other work projects and my own printer for drafts.
8. I have a more comfortable environment with ample lighting that allows me to work longer without getting headaches or tired from staring at the screen for long periods of time
9. I am less than an hour away in terms of physical availability and can be reached readily anywhere by phone and email.
10. The flexibility makes me happier and I am able to exercise and lead a healthier lifestyle with no loss in productivity to the company
11. My remote rights may be revoked at any time if I you feel I am dropping in productivity as a result of working away from the office
12. I am available to come back in whenever a project that requires my physical presence needs to be done.
13. Working remotely, I have added pressure to complete my work tasks to retain my remote working rights which will lead to consistent and predictable productivity. I will also learn to be more efficient and communicate effectively as a result of being limited to email and phone.
14. I am not distracted by office noise and this allows me to work with more focus and efficiency leading to better output per week.

Now, don’t take this list word for word and use it on your boss. This is just an example of what I used applied to my situation at work. You may be able to use some of the reasons above. Otherwise, you will need to compile your own list of reasons.

There are 3 important principles that you will need to remember when creating this list and they are:

1. The reasons must all be logical Reasons that are based on your feelings or that have no foundation in the productivity of the business can be easily refuted by a boss who is determined to not let you work remotely
2. The reasons must bring more benefit to the company than you
   
   It has to be clear on multiple levels that by working remotely you will be bringing more benefits to the company and not creating more problems.

   Alternatively, the reasons that you give could bring no additional benefit to the company but also no additional disadvantages either. This approach will usually work if a remote working policy already exists within your company.

   Your working remotely could cause some problems for the company, however if presented with the prospect of having you quit if you are refused, this may be enough to let you work remotely. This approach will only work if you have a high perceived value within the company making it more disadvantageous to have you quit rather than let you work remotely.

3. The reasons must reassure your boss that there is no risk in letting you work remotely You can reduce risk for your boss by assuring them that you will always be reachable and can come into the office if you are ever needed in an emergency. This is important initially when you begin teleworking to reassure your boss that you are still available physically if needed.

Over time, supposing you manage to refrain from going back to the office often for whatever reason, your boss will eventually get comfortable with the idea of you working away permanently.

Suggesting a trial run in the initial stages will also allow you to show your boss that you are capable of working remotely and also allow him the option of changing their mind if they feel like it isn’t working out

Giving them the complete freedom to revoke your remote working rights if your productivity drops will make your boss feel like they have complete control over your position and make them more willing to work remotely

Keeping these 3 principles in mind, write your list of reasons for why you should be allowed to work remotely. If you are still having trouble at this point, try writing reasons that your boss would give to disallow you from working remotely and refute them.

This is probably the easier way to go, however it is also important to add benefits that your boss would not necessarily think of to your list of reasons.

Exercise 5.1: What to prepare before asking for permission

Exercise 5.2: Finding good reasons to work remotely

Related posts:

1. Exercise 5.1: What to prepare before asking for permission
2. Exercise 5.2: Closing the deal : Making it risk free
3. Defining your goals: Understanding why you want to Telework