What would you do if your boss suggested that you cut your working hours down to just four normal length days, but said to you, I'll still pay you for five. Would you pitch yourself to check that you weren't dreaming? Well, this is exactly what happened last April at Inventium. Our CEO Michelle La Poidevin or Misha's I call her, suggested to the team that we should try out the four day week. This led to us running a six month experiment where the team all worked four days per week
and had Fridays off. And as a participant in this experiment, I can tell you it was bloody awesome. And today we are going to learn exactly why Mish even suggested this idea and how she manages to be a CEO in just four normal length working days a week. My name is doctor Ramantha Inba, an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work a show about how to help you do
your best work. Now, you might have heard my chat with Inventium's head of Learning, Charlotte Rash last week where we got into the nitty gritty details of how our four day week experiment worked what we measured, and we also addressed what some of the skeptics might be thinking. So go back and have a listen to that show if you're keen to go deep into the four day
week concept. And today in my chat with Mish, we talk about how on earth do you lead a business where people only work four days but we pay them for five, and how do we balance the need to collaborate with also working super efficiently, and what the biggest challenges have been in actually making the four day week work. So it was actually your idea to put forward the
four day week for Inventium. Can you tell me why you decided to put it forward when we were thinking about how to I think our challenge was make eight great because we had reduced ourselves to a team of eight at the time.
I think the three main reasons I would say that I felt that four day week was particularly good for Inventium was first of all, around staff retention.
So, as we say, it was born out of the challenge of how to make eight great?
And like all businesses need to be doing everything we can do to attract and retrain the brightles people, but we also want to ensure that they're doing their best work. And I think that this is the real beauty of four day week is that it's not just another perk.
It's not a gym membership, or it's not just something that's nice to have. It actually empowers people to change and to do their best work. The second thing with.
That is around trust. So trust has also been really big at Inventium, and I see four day week as a wonderful display of that trust and really empowering for our employees. And then the third thing I would say is that four day week is really all about outcomes over hours. And I know that Stanford, you did a study that found the overworked employees are actually much less productive in terms of output that employees working an average.
Or normal week, and that is.
Likely due to increases in fatigue and stress, which may also result in increases in mistakes or poorer quality of work, which essentially will further negate any perceived productivity gains of working those longer hours. So ultimately, so much time is wasted in a typical working day, and four day week is about minimizing that and getting people to focus on the stuff that matters and not the clock.
Now, The other thing that you were responsible for is the name of the initiative, So we deliberately didn't call it Inventiums for a Day Week, although that is what a lot of organizations call it around the world, the four day week. We called it something else. Can you talk about what the name was that you came up with? And I will add that we did crowdsources to the whole team, but just so happened your name was best and why you thought of his name.
So we decided to call it the Gift of the Fifth And I feel like that's a name that really reflects the intent of the initiative rather than all of the instructions or prescriptive behaviors you want behind it. So essentially what it's reflective of is the fact that it's a gift we are giving our people so that they can potentially spend more time with their family, more time with their friends.
More time in their community. They can spend more time on themselves in personal development or reading or anything they like. But essentially, it's a gift, So treat it that way, really value it, really make the most of it, and make sure that they are kind of changing their behaviors in the week to ensure that they can take on that gift, that they can accept that gift every Friday. So I think that that was an important thing for to do that.
It's not just kind of another day off where we want you all kind of sitting at home chilling out.
I mean, you might want to do that occasionally, but treat it as.
A gift where you can really do something valuable with it for yourself or for others around you.
I think that's so important because what I would say we've learned an inventive through trying out all sorts of unusual staff benefits, is that it's really easy for these things to get taken for granted. And I'd say that's certainly what happened three and a half years on with unlimited leave, when you know.
It worked really well for about three years.
And then I think in that third year, I think that there was a bit of people taking it for granted and not quite using it in line with the intent of the policy.
Would you agree with that.
Yeah, I would, And I think it's good to note as well.
So we've actually superseded that initiative with the four day week, which is a good learning in itself that we should always be continually reviewing all of these practices and ensuring that it best meets the needs of the business and all of us as individuals as well.
Now at a Ventium we run a holocracy, which means that we don't have managers per se. But having said that, as CEO, Mishu still are the one that sits down with everyone in the business once a quarter and works with them on seeing how they're tracking towards their goals.
And you give them feedback during this process.
And I want to know for you, how now that people are doing a four day week and this is a permanent thing, how do you assess if people on track in terms of their productivity Because one of the key things behind the four day week is one hundred percent productivity but using eighty percent time.
So it is a little bit trickier in the inconsultancies and as knowledge workers in that we could really put this key daily or weekly metric on productivity, you know, things like generating ten reports in the week or you know x number of sales. Having said that, people need clear guidance around this to feel comfortable that they can take the day without any guilt.
So while it is a trust system, they absolutely do.
Need these boundaries and parameters to feel like they are empowered to take the day without feeling guilty about that.
So I think that the key.
Thing here is to look big picture, and given one of the major premises of four day week is to increase effectiveness, the structure we put in place around this ladders up to our company goals. So this is ensuring that employees have a real connection to our greater purpose, which is really critical as this is what will essentially tap into their intrinsic motivators and really empower them to
manage their workload accordingly. So in terms of how I assess whether we are being productive or not, basically it is looking at our company goals, which ladder down to individual level operas or KPIs, which I do review every quarter as you said, but also I meet with some people more informally more frequently as well, and most people in the team have broken these down into monthly, weekly,
and sometimes daily goals. But essentially I use those quarterly check ins to make sure the individuals are on track, and I also use all of my company level data and reporting to assess more frequently whether we are still on track.
And just to clarify for those that don't know what an opera isn't we adapted that to ourselves. We mean the Google slash Intel OKRs, objective and key results. We add activities onto the end, hence oper Now company goals can you give people a sense We obviously don't have to specifically say what our company goals are, but just the categories of company goals that we are tracking to go yet where we're on track from a productivity point
of view, or we're falling behind. So we do have our typical financial metrics which are fairly easy to track to see whether we.
Are falling behind. We've also got our client experience metrics.
We've also got our employee experience metrics, and we also have another one around staff tenure, which is a really important one.
Obviously that four day.
Week contributes to as well, but essentially, as a team, if we're meeting our company goals, then I'm personally more than satisfied that everyone is working on the right things because I know that they are all linked and that I can more than justify a full day week.
I want to get into some of the nitty gritty around how we do things and maybe how we've changed things so that we can as an organization fit five days into four. And I think meetings are something that can eat up a lot of time in a lot of organizations and cause a lot of pain and fatigue. Can you talk about what we do at Inventing with regard to meetings that help us use that time productively?
As you say, massive, massive time suck for many, many people. And I'd say that the two key things that Inventings really focused on, particularly over the last twelve months in terms of minimizing meetings are that we do a payo or a purpose, agenda and outcomes for any meetings that
go in the diary. So that means that before we send somebody a meeting request, we have to actually sit down and go what is the purpose, what is the agenda, and what are the outcomes that we are wanting from this meeting?
And often what happens with.
That is that when you sit down to actually do that, you go, oh, that might not need to even be a meeting, or that might actually be only ten minutes, rather than defaulting to that typical hour that the Google Calendar sets for us. So that's one thing that's really kind of cut down the amount of meetings. The other thing is that we've really focused on moving to to asynchronous communication style, so that's also been big in taking
a lot of meetings out of the diary. So this means that quite often we will instead of chatting about something for an hour over a meeting, we will collaborate in a Google doc and input all our own thoughts and collaborating writing in our own time rather than jumping straight to a meeting. And I think that that's also been really effective at minimizing the number of meetings that go in the diary.
Yeah, and something that we did recently is we formally articulated what our communication values and ways of working as a team, and do we as a team default to synchronous or asynchronous communication which basically means non live asynchronous so via email for example, or synchronous which is essentially live communication as you do in a meeting or a phone chat or something like that. And we really agreed as a team that asynchronous was the default for us,
and that's really important. And I think for me, what I find when I'm thinking about setting a meeting and I sit down to do a Payoh, what will often or at least sometimes happen is that I'll go, actually, this could just be an email. I really don't actually need synchronous communication. I am meeting for this. Do you have that same experience as well, Mish.
Yeah, absolutely all the time.
And I think that being more aware of that and more mindful of that across the team has just eliminated so many meetings out of the diary.
And now one of the things that I think maybe listeners might be thinking going from a five day to a four day week is well, that's less time for collaboration, Like, do you still have time for collaboration given that you're all presumably being so productive, and how i'd love you to talk about how we as a team and also for you and the projects that you're working on, balanced deep work versus collaboration, given now we have to fit it into four days rather than five.
So I think the first thing here, which I know that you probably say multiple times when we're talking about four day week, is that the biggest thing with four day week is reducing the amount of downtime or the amount of time that's wasted in a day. So in saying that, it absolutely does not mean that there's not
enough time anymore for deep work and for collaboration. It just means that we have to be more selective about what we are working on and making sure that we are working effectively and on the right things in terms of deep work and collaboration. So again, I think that most of my collaboration, if I'm doing it most effectively, it is using tools like Google Docs and things like that in an asynchronous format.
If there is something that we.
Need to really get our brains together to solve something really challenging, what we would typically do is put out
a challenge to the relevant people. Get people to put all of their ideas and their thoughts into what we call a glove, which is essentially just a notepad to collect your thoughts as they come to you, and then to bring those to a meeting if we are choosing to do it in a more synchronous communication format, and then we each go around and share our ideas that we had gloved previously, and that then also makes the time far more effective because everybody's had a chance to
formulate their own thoughts before they are biased by other thoughts, and also to all be able to contribute equally to that discussion whenever we actually schedule.
That in And look, you mentioned Google Docs. I just feel like we lean even more heavily on Google Docs and Google Sheets, which are essentially like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel if you've never used Google Docs and Google Sheets, but they're collaborative in real time, so as you make changes, they are saved as you are typing, essentially. So I know, for me, I use those all the time when I'm collaborating and I'm just thinking, mish it might be useful
to talk through a couple of examples. I know I've got one in my head that I can talk through, and maybe if you can have a think about how you have used Google Sheets or Google Docs for something
you've been collaborating on. So the thing that comes to my mind is last year, probably the biggest, most time consuming project that I worked on, was designing, in collaboration with some other team members, the methodology for assessing people or companies in the AFR Boss and Best Places to Work list, because it was a brand new list that we have just started doing with fair Facts, and it's huge, like designing an assessment for what is now a major
national list. So there was a lot of work. There was so much research, like hundreds of journal papers were read and analyzed, and there were really three of us that were working on the assessment. And while we would have a weekly check in meeting, what we often found is that because we were working in the one Google doc, so we were updating research, putting in suggestions for assessment, making comments to each other, replying to those comments within that same dock.
It often negated the need for a meeting.
For synchronous communication, but it was incredibly collaborative, like collaborating throughout the day, but in a really efficient and effective way. So that, for me is an example that comes to mind, But how about for you, where like, what's an example of how you collaborate in this productive and asynchronous world.
I think all actually just build on your example having been involved in that process. And I think one of the things that made using Google docs so effective is that it actually meant that people were able to really formulate intelligent thoughts before having to express them in a group format.
So I think often when we jump.
Quickly to meetings, if you're having to think on the spot and make decisions on the spot, you kind of might just end up going along with the majority or not really being able to formulate your best thoughts. And definitely we've got some people on the team that absolutely work better when they've had that chance to think beforehand and really kind of nut through what the best plan
of attack would be. And I think that collaborating over Google docs really allowed those people to put their best thoughts on the table rather than kind of half bake thoughts or thoughts that were influenced by what was happening in a meeting scenario. So I think that's another reason why that made our work so much more effective. It wasn't just about.
Time, it was about the quality of work being produced.
Now, another decision that we made when we were designing for a day week, which I didn't actually cover with Shah last week when I had her on the show, is that we decided to make it voluntary as opposed to mandatory. Can you talk about why we made that decision.
Like I said at the start, this is not just a perk. This is something that does require individuals to change their behaviors and change the ways they work in order to make it work. And for some people that might have not worked for them in terms of how they structured their week. So, for example, we've got one in the employees, Zoe, head of consulting.
She's amazing. She has a young son, so she prefers to do her.
Eighty percent time across the five days and finish earlier each day.
To do school pickup and stuff like that.
And it's important that we were able to make that work for her as well, because the whole premise of this is around balance and flexibility.
And working effectively.
So I think that was important that we made the kind of fifth day off optional if it didn't quite fit in with the intent of the overall policy and in.
Terms of keeping it going, like, we finished our six month experiment and it was a boring success, and Shara and I went into the metrics that we tracked in last week's episode.
If you came to hear more.
About that, listeners, but we did think about, well, doesn't just keep going indefinitely or do we put trip wires in place to constantly and deliberately check ourselves and go is it still working? Is it still achieving the aim? Do we still do it? So Mish, can you talk about how we decide whether we keep it going and what those trip wise, were that would make us stop and go, oh, hang on, do we need to go back to five days now?
So, at a company level, if there comes a time that we aren't meeting our company goals, I don't know that that would be a direct killer of the four day week, because I think that there are many factors that can be contributing to that, and it may or may not.
Be related to four day weeks.
So I think the important thing is there is that I'm not assuming that that.
Will be the cause.
I would dig deep into any data available to me before coming to that.
Or any other conclusion. That being said, the team does know.
That it's a privilege to be working in this way, and if we do need to revert back to a five day week for operational reasons or anything else that we deemed was the right thing to do, then that would be accepted and understood.
They certainly don't see it as a right that we have this. If we felt like it was.
Best for the team and the company to go back to five day week, then that would make sense.
But I think that it.
Wouldn't be a direct kill if we weren't if we weren't meeting our company goals, It would certainly be a factor that we'd look at, though on.
An individual level.
Again, I don't see it as a black and white thing. If someone's not meeting their operas, I would really look closely and look at the bigger picture they're like, are they in a role where they're playing to their strengths, do they have role plarity?
Do they have the right goals? Do they need help to work more effectively?
As we've talked about, there's lots of kind of behavior change and tools that you need to make this work. But have you been clear with your expectations? And I think the chances are if that was the case where someone was struggling and not meeting their goals, and if I just took it away, it might not solve the issue anyway.
And maybe the issue is that they haven't been taking it enough.
And then they're therefore burning out any So I think it's very much a case by case basis, and certainly you need to have metrics to trap to know that you are not meeting your company goals.
But I don't think it's as black and white as if you're not meeting X, then why it has to go?
I want to shift gears now into looking at you as a leader of the business and what's it been like for you as a CEO working a four day week. So I do feel very privileged that I can do this and that we add invent him are very very lucky that we have a highly motivated and engaged team that are very easy to trust without any kind of concerns at all. I think the best thing though, for me as a CEO is that I genuinely believe that it makes me better at my job.
It absolutely reduces my stress. It gives me more thinking, reflection and reading time.
It gives me a free day with no meetings, so if I need to do deeper thinking or catch up on something that didn't get done on the other four days, I can do that on a Friday as.
Opposed to taking that into the weekend.
So that then enables me to have more balance in my life and to feel really refreshed come Monday.
And I think the other thing is that it just challenges you to continually.
Be more effective and to help others be the same. And that's the really rewarding aspect, as you can help people to do really well at work and have them feel really great at that, but also to help them to allocate more time to their families and passions outside of work.
What do you typically do on your Friday off? Like, what are the some of the ways that you're using it.
So I've been working remotely for about three years now from home, and one of the downsides of working at home is that you don't have as much social interaction or opportunity to meet new people, and it's very easy to get stuck in the house behind your desk all day with limited incidental or planned exercise, talking to the station or walking to get lunch and stuff like that.
So one of the things that I filled my fifth.
Day with is learning how to play golf, which has been amazing socially, mentally, and physically. I've been able to meet so many more wonderful people in my local community.
I'd also tix the exercise box.
It's also highly strategic and requires a different type of focus in a totally different way. I've also been able to volunteer within the club, which was something that was really important to me as well. It's also something I can do with my partner and so while like I know that the team is very very sick of me
talking about my handicap reductions and various golfing escapades. It's been absolutely one of the best things that I've ever done in terms of getting balanced back in my life, and I honestly don't think I would have been able to do that without the four day week.
You're very humble, wish like volunteering within the clas like president or something like that.
No, not quite. I'm vice cat and at the moment.
Yes, advice under achiever. Yeah, that's fun. And what's your handicap?
For the people that do actually know something about golf unlike me.
So my handicap is down to twenty six, which I started at forty five in May.
So it's coming down quite quickly, which is very nice.
Is that good?
When golfers listening go oh wow, she's like not quite let they would.
Go, Okay, she's working that, she's come down quick. She's got potential.
It's probably what they would say. That's certainly not a superstarist yet.
That's funny because Shad took.
Up bar teaching, so we talked about last week about how she's in the middle of learning to be a bar teacher, and it's funny because I didn't actually know that she was becoming a teacher mish.
This was new news to me.
On the I knew that she was really into bar and doing lots of classes. But I've suggested that we'll have to do some virtual bar classes.
I used to do bar all the time. I think you might remember that. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. For me.
I have not taken up physical movement, although I do incorporate physical movement into every day, so that's part of my habits, I guess, But yeah, for me, as you know, I decided with that fifth day, which felt really weird.
I remember the.
First time I had the Friday off and I'm like, what do I do if I'm not working? Because I love my work and I love immersing myself in work. So I just decided to create more work, strictly speaking, in ventive. So that's what led to me creating a second podcast, how to Date, which some listeners might be familiar with because I do plug it occasionally on this show.
But that's been super fun for me. It's so rewarding starting a project from scratch, or in your case, starting a new hobby or learning a new skill and just experiencing that sense of mastery and getting in flow with something else that has nothing to do with your main job. I think is like, it really is a gift. You know, we call it gift of the fifth, but it really
has been a gift I think for both of us. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And how do you assess during the week whether you can take the gift of the fifth, whether you can take Friday off.
I guess that what I would look at is how the team's going to be honest, and if everyone is on track and if everyone is feeling like they're kicking goals in their role, then I feel like my job is done because I've been clear on what again, what those bigger picture goals are and what the expectations are, and as I've been very lucky to see over the six month trials that we're actually well ahead in our company goals.
So that means that I'm very comfortable with taking the fifth day off.
I also have an amazing, amazing, amazing right hand Georgia, our general manager, who actually one of her operas is around supporting me to make sure that I can take the four day week, So that means that she definitely helps me out on any projects that I'm working on to make sure that I can also take that day as well, which I absolutely think is massively important that I do so that I can role model it for
others in the team. Do you start each week on the Monday going, this is what I want to achieve for the week, and if I achieve that, then, on top of what you said about the team and how they're performing, that you personally feel pretty good about taking the Friday off. So I do that for each day,
so I have ever since I went remote. The one thing that I changed about my working ways so that I didn't have that guilt around working remotely, which is huge when you start working remotely or have any degree of flexibility for the first time, is that each day I set my goal of what is the most valuable thing I could possibly do that day, and that would be the first thing that I basically do that day, and that I make sure that I get done, and
sometimes I might finish that at lunchtime, and then then means that the afternoon I can do more shallow work or even heaven forbid, housework or whatever else needs to be done in my life, or sometimes it might take till till quite late in the day to get something done. But I just know as long as I've done that one valuable thing for the day that helps us progress as a company, then that certainly justifies the four day week for me.
And what's an example of that one thing that you might need to do on a particular day.
It would depend on what we've got going on.
But say even in the holidays, we had a new startup starting first day back of our new year. So I would set myself a goal to say, all right, her whole induction plan needs to be done tomorrow before I do anything else, because that is critical to her success that I get that induction plan done and out to her and communicated the team. So it would be kind of a discrete, one off, little projeck like that that, as I say, might take probably usually nothing shorter than two hours, or it could be.
Longer than that as well.
Yeah, that's interesting that you do that daily.
I think for me, I more look at it as a week long thing for me. For the pasty year or so, I've been using just a personal can bandboard
system where basically there's three columns. I'm actually looking at it now and turning around, so I'm hoping my voice is still coming through the mic where I've got three columns, so I've got to do column A doing and are done and things move to the towards the right columns during the week, and essentially the to do list, what are the big, chunky, deep work esque things that I want to do this week that will mean that I'm making meaningful progress on my own operas or OKRs, And
so long as everything's moved to the right or is at least almost at the right, because there might be roadblocks that I come across that I need to involve other people and so therefore it might not all get done. Like let's say I'm waiting for my dad to do an edit on a video or a podcast interview or.
Something like that. Then I'll be okay, I think I can do this.
But I find that I will often do just an hour of work on Fridays, not often, maybe half the time. I'd probably do an hour maybe two hours of work on a Friday, which I actually really love because it's so peaceful. I'm purely doing it because I'm just personally motivated to do that to get ahead on something or wrap up something, or just feel that sense of closure on just a few kind of loose ends that were hanging around that there's not necessarily a deadline. I don't
necessarily have to get it done, but I do. Yeah, there's something really nice I find about just doing one or two hours in the morning, but then still knowing that I've got the rest of the day to do.
Whatever i want to do that day. Have you had that experience as well?
Because I know that often if I do send an email on a Friday, I will maybe half the time get a response from you.
I'm probably the same. I probably still do one or two hours, but.
That just feels so leisurely and a pleasure to do it on that day as opposed to it cutting into my weekend time. And I also know that no one is expecting me to work or expecting me to apply, so then that then makes it a completely free use of time to get ahead on anything I need to or to finish anything I didn't do in the other four days.
And in those other four days for the skeptics out there, going, yeah, yeah, four days, but they're probably like ten or twelve hour days. What's an average length day for you? Now that we're well and truly into this four day week way of working.
Yeah, so they're definitely not long days. That's really important to note. I actually wouldn't have a clue what my average days because again, I just focused so much on outcomes over hours. It's probably fairly typical if I was to sit down and work it out a seven or
eight hour day. But I also structure my day quite differently, whereby I am a bit of an hour whereby I commonly get my second wind of brain power late in the day, so sometimes I might start later in the morning, but I might do another couple of power hours in the evening as well. But I would say it's definitely not trying to fit a thirty eight hour week into four days.
Absolutely not. Yeah.
Good, And are you taking lunch breaks, mish?
I am I taking lunch bakes, I take a brunch break. So I'm a serial cafe worker whereby, and I can safely say this now that Melbourne people are actually allowed to go to cafe, so I won't offend anyone. But yeah, I commonly work for a couple of hours at a cafe. Well, they make me my food and my lunch for the day.
And has there been any downsides. Do you think to this four day week way of working?
Oh, I need to ask me this, and I look, I really did think about it, hard to go all right, really and really what are the downtipes? And I really struggled to answer this. I think that the most frustrating bit is probably when I talk to other people about it and I see them working ridiculously long hours and then I say, oh, I'm doing this amazing thing called four day week, and they look at me like I'm crazy, and they just well, that's impossible for me.
I can't do that. I'm so busy.
I've got xyz on Like, there's no way my organization could do that because we're just so busy. And that's really frustrating to me because I just look at it and go, no, like, you're probably just working on the wrong things or working completely ineffectively.
I really don't see.
Why this can't work in places, And I think that it absolutely challenges you to be better at working on write things and working effectively, and to then balance that with your home life as well, because you see all these people working these crazy hours and that's not only impacting on their.
Quality of work, but also the quality of their relationships at home, which is just terrible.
So I think that's the most frustrating thing that so many people discount this idea when there are so many advantages.
Yeah, it's funny the downside thing.
I remember I was asked that question I did in an interview about the four day week with Sky News a little while ago. And the media want there to be a downside because that's that's what's interesting, that's what gets clicks or whatever. But yeah, I personally can't think of any downsides either, which you know, it's a bit of a letdown of an answer, but.
So far, so good. We'll come back to anyone if we find some.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, we're seven months in, and what's been most challenging for you in leading a company that only works four days a week.
The biggest thing I would say here is that you do need to really think carefully about how you recruit and on board new people because.
This level of flexibility and this level of trust.
That's associated with something like four day week will likely be very, very different to what anybody has experienced elsewhere, and that transition takes a bit of getting used to.
So some of the things we've done at Inventum to.
Help with this is that we've actually tweaked our company values to align with our very flexible ways of working and integrated these into our recruitment process.
So we change the way that we interview, we change.
A couple of the tasks that we do, and we also spent a lot of time integrating productivity tools and training and meeting minimization and ways of working to ensure that everybody as a team can work their best.
I think you can't assume that everybody has those skills.
People certainly need to be given training and tools into how they can work more effectively.
I think we've had as a result of doing some of those things.
As I said, we've had this amazing new startu Sasha come on board only a couple of weeks ago, and she's already given some really fabulous feedback on some of these tools and how helpful they've been for her coming on board and really fast tracking getting to know others on the team and how they work. So I think focusing on how you recruit and how you're onboard into.
This way of working is definitely something to focus on.
I think the recruitment things really interesting, and I'm wondering, can you give an example of a value that did change and invent him and how we've then translated that into incorporating that as part of our recruitment process.
So pretty much.
All of them actually have a link into this way of working. But one of the example that I can give you is around is called better than before. So this is about how we all strive to make each other, our clients in the world better with everything that we do, and we basically expect our staff to just constantly improve things. And just because we do it one way doesn't mean
it's the best way. Always find ways to work more quarterly or more efficiently and do things better and to share that with the team.
So what we did is that in.
An early stage in the recruitment process, we got all of our candidates to do.
A video where they shared how they've.
Made something better than before and a change that they've made to make things better. And that was just an early taste in the recruitment process to one of our values.
And what's another example, because I think these tangible examples of how we've done that are really important because I think it's easier said than done. Just like hire people that can work independently and autonomously and that you can trust like that is a very very hard.
Thing to do.
And I mean we've been working together for seven years and every time we recruit, we iterate that recruitment process. So what's another example or two of how we do that and how we find these unique people who we know are going to thrive and invent herem So.
Another one that we have is called progress over.
Perfection, which's reflective of how fast we move and how quickly we all need to learn, and the fact that we all need to have that change orientation and to be able to change often. So what we encourage everyone to do is to constantly test and adapt based.
On what you learn. So Fortite Week is actually a great example of this where we've positioned it as an experiment.
We've put in place metrics, we've tested them, we've all adapted our behaviors based on what we learn, and as a result, we've actually implemented this process. But we absolutely encourage this as individuals, and we want people to either adapt or acknowledge if something's failed and change as a result of the failure.
So in the recruitment.
Process, we did a interview about the middle of the process, which basically dell. We got our candidates to delve into a time where they've failed and what they learned from that. So one other example I give you is our FI value, which is make it happen. And this is reflective of the fact that we are a small yet highly flexible and impactful team with big aspirations to keep big goals.
And what we want to encourage is that everybody takes personal responsibility for making an inventing an awesome place to work and really repaying the trust that things like four.
Day week really gives people.
And so what we did in the recruitment process is we got people to give us their best working and productivity tip to make sure that they get important stuff done, to give us a sense of how they think about finding efficiencies and how they think about taking personal responsibility to make things happen. So we actually learn a lot from that too, because we've got some really cool productivity tips from our candidates through.
That awesome and one final thing I want to explore is I imagine that there are some listeners who are like, ah, I wouldn't mind suggesting this to my CEO or my boss, or maybe they are the boss or CEO and they want to start trying it. What advice would you give to those people.
So I do have a few top tips here that I would say. The first one would be to frame it as an experiment. You will absolutely come across skeptics. You will absolutely come across a whole heap of assumptions that people will hold around why this will not work and why this will be terrible. So the best thing you can do to overcome all of those is to simply frame it as an experiment, set some metrics, and.
Use this data that you collect to crush all the assumptions.
The second one, which we have talked about I would highly recommend as well, is to give it a name that reflects your intents, So similar to gift of the fifth what reflects.
The intent of the four day week at your organization.
The third tip that I would say would be to absolutely role model it. As a leader. You must take the fifth day, otherwise no one else will absolutely book in something that you love to do every Friday. That ensures that you do take today exactly like I've done with my golf And I would say try and avoid sending emails to your team if you can. We do still a little bit, but definitely it's massively reduced, and if anything, it's reduced.
All the weekend emails that we probably used to send.
There might be a couple on Friday, but there's never any on the weekend, very minimal anyway.
So the other part of that would be to share how you've used the day.
So one of the things that we do is on a Monday team meeting, we have a standing agenda item for people to share anything interesting or fun that they did on their gift of the fifth, which is really great to show how grateful we all are for the day and all of the various things that we've been able to do as a result. The final thing I would say that is it's possibly not as radical as
people think. There are quite a number of companies out there already trialing it, and some of the world's most productive countries I know, like Norway and Denmark and Germany. I think you already work an average week of around twenty seven hours and they're still super productive. So definitely don't think be scared of it. I would recommend setting up an experiment and giving it a.
Go awesome advice and finally, mish if people want to connect with you, what is the best way for them to do that?
You can find me on LinkedIn, So Michelle.
Lapoidevin, I do have a long surname, but I'm sure you will find me there. Otherwise, email Michelle at inventium dot com dot au and I love talking about this stuff, so happy to answer any questions that anyone has on email.
Famous last words.
Yes, it's been wonderful having you on the show again and unpacking the four day week. And look, I'm sure that we have inspired or encouraged people who are maybe on the fence to really think about giving it a go and running an experiment. So thank you so much for your time, no wries, thank you.
That is it for today's show. If you are enjoying How I Work.
I would be so so, so so appreciative if you took ten seconds out of your day to pop into Apple Podcasts, if that's where you listen to it, and just tap on the star rating. You scroll right down to the bottom of the How I Work Show and tap on a star rating, and you might even want to write a little note of some feedback and I'm so appreciative of the hundreds of people that have done this.
It really does make my day.
So thank you, thank you.
So that is it for today's show and I will see you next time.