Work vs. Effort

This article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette was referred to me by David L Holzer, a good friend and insurance advisor with an interesting view of the world:

Work Zone: A bottomless well of vacation time

The gist of the article is that Netflix has no vacation or sick leave policy, and how this kind of "non-conventional" policy is taking hold here and there. Their policy is, if you got your work done and you want to knock off for a few days, do it.

From my point of view, here are the money quotes:

"The worst thing is for a manager to come in and tell me: 'Let's give Susie a huge raise because she's always in the office.' What do I care? I want managers to come to me and say: 'Let's give a really big raise to Sally because she's getting a lot done' -- not because she's chained to her desk." - Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings

"We're a grown-up company, with over 12,000 employees, and you have to have some semblance of process and procedure." - unidentified Yahoo spokeswoman

Notice the difference? Reed Hastings @ Netflix is more interested in getting WORK done. Yahoo is more interested in the processes and procedures. If you have the processes to get the work done than what difference does it make if you have 12 or 12,000 employees? The point is still to get the work done! A "grown-up company" - What in the world is that?

Here lies the crux of the problem with a lot of managers. They confuse work with effort. Work is the result of effort. We pay people for work or results. If we as managers give someone assignments that they can complete with 1,960 hours of effort then why should they have to hang around the office for the other 120 hours (3 work weeks) in that year?