If your career or the time you’ve spent following business up and downs doesn’t predate 2006 then you may not think of Best Buy as a successful, cutting edge, highly innovative company with an exceptional culture.

I was reminded of Best Buy when I read that many managers still believe that time = productivity and contributions.

The managers viewed employees who were seen at the office during business hours as highly “dependable” and “reliable.” Employees who came in over the weekend or stayed late in the evening were seen as “committed” and “dedicated” to their work.

That attitude is so last century; in fact, it harks back to the industrial and even the agrarian age when presence was synonymous with productivity. After all, you couldn’t produce if you weren’t there.

The reason I thought of Best Buy is because it was the 2003 birthplace of ROWE.

ROWE means Results Only Workplace Environment and I’ve written about it previously (a lot), so rather than write the same stuff again here’s a link to my ROWE-related posts.

As to its success, in 2010 total revenues increased 11% and $4.4 billion of that was from female customers—not your typical big box tech shopper (at that time).

The extraordinary culture created by Brad Anderson that allowed for the bottom-up development of something as revolutionary as ROWE can not be overstated.

But it can be repeated.

Flickr image credit: Keith Laverack

The most recent act of executive ultra-stupidity brought down not only Brian Dunn, Best Buy’s CEO, but also Richard Schulze, its founder who was CEO for 40 years and Chairman for ten.

All over what was, according to Dunn and the 29-year-old woman subordinate, a platonic friendship, albeit one with some very tasty perks for the gal.

Schulze is out because he learned about it last December, but didn’t mention it to his board, HR or ethics officer. (Hell of a way to cap 50-plus years of amazing success.)

The report cited the effects of the relationship, including disruption in the workplace, damaged employee morale and perceived favoritism that undermined the employee’s supervisor’s attempts to manage her.

“Further, the C.E.O.’s relationship with this employee led some employees to question senior management’s commitment to company policy and the ethical principles the company champions,” the report said. “During interviews, some employees said that they felt that the rules appeared to apply to every employee except the C.E.O.,” it said.

When will they learn?

When will ‘but me’ be exorcised from executive/management thinking?

When will management learn the importance of walking their talk and that the higher the position the more important that becomes?

Three questions, but just one five-letter answer—never.

Image credit: unkown

[Oops! My apologies. this weekend was the first warm days where I live and I spent them in my garden:) (What a mess!) In so doing, I lost track and didn’t write Sunday’s Quotable Quotes and although I had this post ready I forgot to schedule it for this morning. –Miki]

I’m sure you’ve seen the story regarding the resignation of Best Buy CEO Brian J. Dunn.

Yet one more incidence of fooling around with the help = inappropriate personal conduct = resignation/termination.

Lawyer Michael W. Peregrine writes that times are changing.

It’s the traditional compact in corporate America: what C.E.O.’s do on their own time is their business, as long as they are not breaking any laws. And it’s a compact that is rapidly going by the wayside, as boards concerned with the corporate reputation are increasingly making clear.

However, it does make one wonder when actions that have almost always resulted in termination at lower levels make headlines when they happen in the executive suite.

With few exceptions, most companies have rules against managers dating subordinates; affairs between peers are considered dicey and intra-office adultery is a definite no-no.

When companies are demanding entre to the personal/private areas of candidates’ social media prior to hiring why is it so surprising that corporate boards are focusing on personal/private executive behavior?

In a world where street reps are forever and the bedrock of good corporate culture is trust and authenticity there is no room for do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do executives.

Three years ago after reading a Business Week cover story I wrote about ROWE, the results only work environment, and why it is imperative that your MAP support it before you try to implement it.

Last week Michelle Conlin, who wrote the original BW story, brings us up-to-date on Cali Ressler and Jodi Thompson, the two HR pros who originally formulated ROWE and used a stealth approach to build the initiative at Best Buy; no longer at Best Buy they now run a consultancy called CultureRx that helps other companies move to ROWE.

Conlin reposts a story that appeared in the Society of Human Resource Managers (members only) about Gap Outlet, which is migrating its headquarters staff to a ROWE environment.

“Eric Severson, vice president of HR, believed the culture and the demographics at Gap Outlet were primed for a solution like ROWE. “We are in one of the worst commute cities and in one of the most expensive places to live,” he explained. “We have a 76 percent female workforce with an average age of 34.””

“ROWE also is self-policing, Severson discovered: People ferret out those not doing the work because everyone is highly protective of the initiative. “There are very few talent management programs that don’t create a sense of entitlement,” he said. “This is an agreement between the employees and the company that in exchange for the most incredible freedom to do your job in a way that makes sense for you, you will perform highly.”

Interestingly, ROWE solves another management quandary—how to correct the employee with marginal output, but who puts in the hours. This is especially valuable with Millennials who often feel that showing up is half the job.

Under ROWE all issues become performance issues, i.e., discussions center on results and how to improve them as opposed to attendance. Since work can be done at any time and the choice is left to employees there are no excuses.

Read both stories, do a reality-check on your MAP and then think about how you can implement ROWE or ROWE-like elements in your organization while keeping in mind Gap Inc. executive vice president of HR Eva Sage-Gavin’s admonishment.

“The culture has to be right first with a high degree of trust. Check your culture, look at your demographics and if all those are green, then what’s the risk in trying it? Go slow, pilot it and check the results.”

Image credit: drustar on flickr