A Call for Freedom

Greek historian Thycydides aptly noted, “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” Choice is the act of making a decision. But it’s more than that. Choice, by enhancing one’s perception of control and freedom, can increase one’s sense of happiness.

The Psychology of Freedom

In 1975, Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin conducted their seminal study on the effects of enhanced personal responsibility and choice.

They gave residents on one floor of a nursing home (the experimental group) messages that emphasized their sense of personal responsibility. They had the choice to decide which movie night they would attend, if they chose to attend at all. They also received a plant and given the choice to take care of it themselves.

Residents on a different floor (the control group) were given communication that stressed the staff’s responsibility for them. These residents were told which movie night they were scheduled to attend. They too received a plant, but were told that the nurses were responsible for watering and caring for it.

Results of the study found that, compared to the control group, residents with more personal responsibility reported significantly greater increases in happiness; they were more active and alert; and their movie attendance was higher. A year and a half later, they were still doing better, and their mortality rate was half that of the residents in the control group.

Rules, Rules, Rules

Many of us can relate to the feeling of being in an institution without any perception of control. Remember that job when you were required to punch in and out of a time clock? What about those times when you couldn’t leave the office a minute early, impatiently waiting for the 5 o’clock hour to strike like a school kid waiting for the 3 o’clock bell?

I bet those jobs didn’t bring a great deal of satisfaction or happiness to your life. It’s the ball-and-chain mentality that continues to plague our attitude towards work. We’re bound by rules all day, which are detailed in employee handbooks and passed around in memos, written in a don’t-do-this-don’t-do-that type of prose. We graduate from high school, experience a few years of freedom in college, only to return to the jailhouse mindset of the working world.

Goodbye Rules, Hello Freedom

Like the experimental group in Langer & Rodin’s classic study, several companies who follow the principles of Cult Branding are embracing a radical new way of promoting freedom and personal responsibility in the workplace.

Best Buy, the nation’s leading electronics retailer, transformed their work culture by implementing ROWE, “Results-Only Work Environment,” where there are no mandatory business meetings and no set schedules. Under this new model, performance is based on output instead of the number of hours clocked at the office.

At Best Buy, you can leave the office at 3 o’clock to pick up your kids, take a two-hour work break to go grocery shopping, or not come in at all. People have the freedom to work whenever and wherever they want—at home, in a coffee shop, or on the beach. Jody Thompson, ROWE’s co-founder calls it “TiVo for your work.” The results? Some ROWE teams report that voluntary turnover rates have decreased by as much as 90%, and on average, ROWE teams have demonstrated a 41% increase in productivity.

Last year, DVD-by-mail shop Netflix made a similar unprecedented move among large companies and declared their new vacation policy for salaried employees, an oxymoron really, in that it’s more of a non-policy. It’s simple: Take as much time off, as long as you get your work done.

Netflix explicitly states on their website, “Rules annoy us. We believe in freedom and responsibility, not rules.” They explain that rules inhibit creativity and entrepreneurship, which inevitably leads to a lack of innovation. Without innovation to drive business forward, everyone suffers. The answer? Take care of your employees, foster freedom and control in the workplace, and they’ll give you their best work.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings calls face-time requirements and vacation limits “a relic of the industrial age.” The “culture of autonomy” is reflected in Hastings’ original vision: “We want our employees to have great freedom—freedom to be brilliant or freedom to make mistakes.”

Like Netflix, financial information provider The Motley Fools embraces this radical vacation policy. In their “work and have a life too” philosophy, they encourage employees to “do an amazing job and take the time you need.” The Fools take pride in their unpretentious workplace where suits, neckties, and pantyhose are artifacts of the past. They have a game room on their premises, which is always open, and they explicitly tell their employees to “take the time to shop online.” What other company do you know encourages employees to take advantage of corporate time for personal use?

In the Cult Branding Workbook, BJ Bueno explains the need to “Sell-In to Your Internal Team.” To sell-in, companies must create a vision that the entire organization can be passionate about. If you pride yourself on upholding B-values like truth and autonomy, those values must be embraced at the organizational level. When these values permeate the entire culture, you have happier and more productive employees who will ultimately serve your customers, the way you serve your employees.

Foolish practice? We don’t think so.

See the full article about Best Buy’s ROWE program in Business Week.

See the full article about Netflix’s Vacation Policy in the Oakland Tribune.

The original psychological study can be found at:
Langer, E. J., & Rodin, J. (1975). The effects of choice and enhanced personal responsibility for the aged: A field experiment in an institutional setting. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 34 (2), 191-198.