Drop the words "flexwork" or "telecommuting" into any conversation and all of a sudden the person listening to you has visions of an office gone awry: cubicles gathering dust, crickets chirping in empty hallways and employees passing each other like ships in a foggy night. It is assumed that when you change the standard world-order of work, the entire workplace shifts into an alternative universe.

After having heard about our switch to a results-only work environment (ROWE), a colleague of mine from another company came to visit our office. She told me later that she was surprised to find staff dressed in normal clothes (she had expected everyone to be wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers). She was surprised to see cars in the parking lot. She was astonished to find cubicles, offices, and conference rooms buzzing with activity. Instead of broken malfunctioning teams she saw staff laughing and working together with an amazing level of cohesiveness.

It may sound counterintuitive, but giving employees the opportunity to control their time and work outside the office at their own discretion actually improves teamwork. In observing our ROWE, it appears that this phenomenon has a number of explanations. On the most fundamental level, because an employee's performance in a ROWE is based on their ability to achieve their results, they have to successfully work with other members of their team to achieve those results.

In addition, when you build a work environment where all employees are treated equally and all employees are trusted, you also start looking differently at how teams are constructed in the first place. Since switching to ROWE our working groups are increasingly made up of multiple levels of staff (i.e. director, administrative assistant, field staff) and because everyone has the same basic rights, they work less as a hierarchy and more as a team. Directors, for instance, are not the only ones with the privilege to work outside the office. This creates equal interactivity because all team members feel that they are on a more level playing field.

ROWE also requires increased communication among staff of all levels and in all departments. Since no one can necessarily count on being able to walk down the hall between 8 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. (the hours our building is physically open) and find who they need. Staff members learn to communicate with each other in advance, planning meetings with a true purpose and directive. Staff members let each other know when they will be in the office and when they will not, providing alternative methods for contact, such as a cell phone number for text messaging or phone calls. Since switching to ROWE, it is not uncommon for me to be on the phone with one of our staff at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night or text messaging with them on a Saturday morning because that is when it is most convenient for both of us to connect. Communication in general feels much more personal, directed and effective.

Finally, our company's sense of team has been heightened through the cross-training we now undertake as a key part of our results-only work environment to ensure that we can provide high-quality customer service no matter who is available. By ensuring that we have staff throughout the office cross-trained in key functions, there is a much greater sense of everyone working toward the same goal and understanding what everyone else does.

Our customers were surprised a few weeks ago to see me standing behind the counter in our retail shop ringing up their purchases and answering their questions about merchandise. In our organization there is no such thing as being too high up to do a job - we all work together to make sure that our customers are being served.

If you are having trouble building cohesive teams in your workplace, do not waste your money on expensive team building experts. Trust falls and ropes courses will not magically make happy teams appear if there are still fundamental differences in how different levels of employees are treated and in how employees view their importance as part of the organization's overall team. Instead, put your assumptions aside and do something counterintuitive. What assumptions about work will you challenge?

Jessica H. Lawrence is the CEO of Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council, a non-profit serving 15,000 girls and 5,000 adult volunteers in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. She can be reached at jlawrence@gssgc.org.