Quality Archives - Page 14 of 19

The Results-Only Work Environment

Around 2001 two human resources staff at Best Buy, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, created the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. It judged employees on their performance, “not their hours logged or on-site attendance.” Its rule was: “Results are the only measure.” The two founders later wrote a book about it.

In 2013 Best Buy ended ROWE during a corporate restructuring. A company spokesman explained: “Particularly in a turnaround, what matters is the ability of employees to collaborate and work together.”

You Are What Your Record Says You Are

“You are what your record says you are.” The line is credited to the football coach Bill Parcells. In January 1994 a newspaper column credited it to “a wise man with a bad football team and a Super Bowl ring.” That man was Parcells, then in his first year as coach of the New England Patriots.

The column’s point was that nobody wants to hear excuses about injuries, bad luck or a hard schedule. The line is older than Parcells’s use of it. The San Diego Union printed it in October 1978, under the headline “Chargers Get Foes’ Praise, Not Victories”: “You are what your record says you are, and never mind how you got that way.”

MacGyver

MacGyver ran on American television from 1985 to 1992. Its hero, Angus MacGyver, was played by Richard Dean Anderson. He carried a Swiss Army knife and duct tape instead of high-tech weapons. He regularly solved problems with whatever simple things he could find.

His name became a verb. Merriam-Webster defines MacGyver as “to make, form, or repair (something) with what is conveniently on hand.” The dictionary dates its first known use to 1992.

The Reading Pipe Case

A builder put up a country house for more than $77,000. The contract called for pipe “of Reading manufacture.” Some of the pipe came from other factories. The owner refused to pay the last $3,483.46 until the pipe was replaced. The builder sued. The case, Jacob & Youngs v. Kent, was decided by the Court of Appeals of New York in 1921.

Judge Benjamin Cardozo ruled for the builder. Reading pipe differed from other brands “only by the name of the manufacturer stamped upon it.” Replacing it would cost a great deal. So the owner could claim only the difference in value, “which would be either nominal or nothing.”

The dissent said the owner “had a right to contract for what he wanted.” The majority used a different test: “We must weigh the purpose to be served.” American contract law calls the rule substantial performance.

The Brag Document

In June 2019 Julia Evans advised the readers of her programming blog to keep a “brag document.” She started from a common belief. “There’s this idea that, if you do great work at your job, people will (or should!) automatically recognize that work and reward you for it with promotions / increased pay.” In practice, she wrote, “it’s often more complicated than that.”

Her advice is to write down your own work before performance reviews. “And if you don’t remember everything important you did, your manager (no matter how great they are!) probably doesn’t either.” Work that is hard to see belongs in the document too, “because it’s the most likely to fall under the radar!”

Brag!

In 2003 Warner Books published Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It, by Peggy Klaus. Klaus is a communication and leadership coach who works with Fortune 500 companies.

A summary of the book describes its target as a “venerable performance myth”: “A job well done speaks for itself.” Those who believe it, the summary warns, will find that others “will never know” what they can do. According to Publishers Weekly, Klaus teaches readers to keep a “bragalogue.” This is a short story about their own achievements that they update regularly.

Trust the Process

As general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, Sam Hinkie traded away the team’s most valuable players for high picks in the NBA draft, and the team lost in the meantime. The plan became known as the Process, and “Trust the Process” became the fans’ slogan. In the 2015–16 season the 76ers won 10 games and lost 72.

After a 1–21 start that season, the team brought in Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations. Hinkie stepped down on April 6, 2016, before the team had a winning season.

When It’s Done

The studio 3D Realms announced the video game Duke Nukem Forever on April 27, 1997. For years its standard answer to the question of when the game would ship was “when it’s done.” Wired News gave it its Vaporware Award several times. The game was released in June 2011, more than 14 years later.

Real Artists Ship

At a retreat of the Macintosh team in Carmel, California, in January 1983, Steve Jobs told the team: “Real artists ship.” To ship is to deliver a finished product to customers. The account comes from team member Andy Hertzfeld, who wrote about it later. Quote Investigator concludes that Jobs popularized the expression.

The Crust Tasted Like Cardboard

In an advertising campaign around the end of 2009, Domino’s featured its customers’ complaints. One said the crust tasted like cardboard. The company publicly admitted past mistakes and introduced a new recipe, with a garlic-seasoned crust and a blend of mozzarella and provolone.

The company asked customers to try again. Patrick Doyle, who became CEO as the campaign began, knew the risk. “If people tried (the pizza) again and they had a bad experience, we’d be done.”