October 14, 2025 • 50 mins
Morganne August is a former English teacher who found herself in digital marketing and account management by way of a few local startups. Driven by curiosity and the value of lifelong learning, Morganne enjoyed the fast-paced startup environment, but always found herself more interested in the company-employee relationship than in driving leads.
She now leads Geear’s hiring efforts, supports managers and leaders in growing their people, and shapes the employee experience and company culture as the Director of People Operations. Morganne resides in Richmond, Virginia and is a passionate volunteer for and advocate of the CARITAS Works Program. She believes everyone deserves a work life that enriches their financial stability, mental health, and social well-being.
Geear is a remote-first digital agency that runs toward the toughest marketing challenges financial institutions and industrial manufacturers face.
Taking care of your people is the secret sauce to a thriving business, and if you’re not treating them like the rockstars they are, you might be missing the boat. In this episode, we dive into the world of the four-day work week with Morganne August, the Director of People Operations at GEAR, who’s been rocking this model for two years. We chat about what it really means to care for your employees, which isn’t just about throwing perks at them, but giving them the autonomy and flexibility they crave. This isn’t just a trend; it’s a game-changer, especially as we explore how to balance productivity with well-being in a fast-paced work culture. So, if you're curious about how to make the four-day work week a reality for your team, you’re in for a treat!
The conversation dives deep into the transformative idea of a four-day workweek, a concept that has captured the imagination of many but remains elusive for most. Morganne August, the Director of People Operations at Gear, shares her firsthand experience of implementing this innovative work model. The episode opens with Kent Knievel welcoming Morgan and immediately setting the stage for a discussion that is as practical as it is thought-provoking. Morgan recounts how the seed for the four-day workweek was planted—first hinted at in a whimsical employee engagement survey response long before she joined the company, and then reignited by the success of a pilot program in the UK that demonstrated significant boosts in both employee satisfaction and productivity. She emphasizes that the essence of this shift is not just about reducing hours but about fundamentally rethinking how work is done to enhance focus and efficiency.
As the discussion unfolds, Morganne elaborates on the mechanics of the four-day workweek as implemented at Gear. The company adopted the 180-100 model: achieving 100% of the output expected in 80% of the time, all while maintaining 100% pay. This model encourages employees to prioritize impactful work, necessitating a culture of essentialism where every task is evaluated for its necessity and value. The introduction of universal days off—Fridays—further highlights the company's commitment to work-life balance, allowing employees to manage their personal responsibilities while remaining engaged in their professional roles. Through this approach, Morgan illustrates how Gear fosters a culture of autonomy and trust, which empowers employees to take ownership of their time and productivity.
The episode wraps up with a reflection on the results of the four-day workweek experiment. Morganne shares metrics indicating that employee satisfaction scores skyrocketed post-implementation, even while productivity remained steady. However, she cautions that such initiatives require continuous nurturing and cannot be treated as a one-off solution. The key takeaway is that the four-day workweek is not merely a perk but a radical shift in organizational culture that demands commitment from leadership and clarity in expectations. The...
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
If you're taking care of yourpeople, they'll take care of your
business and taking care of.And you're going to think that this
is funny to say on an episodeabout the four day work week. Taking
care of your people doesn'tmean throwing perks at them. It means
treating them like people youknow, not cogs. It means giving them
autonomy and trust andflexibility and the ability to bring
(00:28):
their whole focused,concentrated selves to work because
you've given them time forrest and time with their families
and time to catch up aroundthe house and things they need to
do.
Hi there and welcome to theStep Up Expert Voices for Leadership
Growth. I'm your host, KentKnievel. Every week I talk to experts
who focus on helping leadersstep up their leadership game. If
you're new to the show, thenon whatever platform you're using,
(00:50):
I encourage you to subscribeso you never miss an episode. One
last thing. As a leadershipdevelopment consultant and executive
coach, I have a particularinterest in supporting recent internally
promoted leaders. If that'syou, or if you support a leader who
has been recently promoted, Iencourage you to visit my website
at Kent Coach Playbook anddownload a free copy of my 90 day
(01:10):
blueprint filled withpractical advice for you or the leader
you support in hitting theground running and truly stepping
up to their new leadershiplevel. Without further ado, on with
the show. Welcome everyone.Today I'm really excited for our
guest today. We're going to betalking about the four day work week
and I'm going to say it nowbecause I almost said it during pre
(01:30):
recording was the four hourworkweek but that is Tim Ferriss
book. No, we are here to talkabout the four day work week. And
with me for this conversationtoday is Morgan August. And I have
to look at my notes becauseI'm going to forget it right away.
I apologize Morgan, directorof people operations at GEAR and
who rolled out a four day workweek two years ago. And so I wanted
(01:54):
to bring you on today when Iheard about this mutual connection
of ours put us in touch newslike you got to talk to Morgan. They
did this. They did the fourday work week. You know it's great
story, you should hear aboutit. And so so glad that you agreed
to come on the podcast todayand tell us all about it.
Yeah, thanks Kent for havingme. I'm really excited to be here.
(02:14):
And you know, just like yousay, you might say the four hour
work week, I might say webstrategies because we just recently
rebranded to gear. So forgiveme if do that. Our company's name
is Gear.
Perfect. Thank you. And beforewe get into the topic, I just think
people like to hear,especially any sort of early or even
curious mid careerprofessionals out there that get
(02:36):
to hear these interviews.Would just love to hear as much of
your sort of career arc,career story leading up to today
as you're willing to get into.So would love to hear, love to hear
about your hero's journey.
Yeah, sure. And you know, ifthere's anything I've learned listening
to your podcast so far, it'sthat most HR professionals did not
start there, they fell into it.
(02:56):
Yeah.
So same for me. I went toschool, I got my bachelor's in English
and my master's in secondaryeducation. So I was a middle and
high school English teacher.Loved the kids.
Yeah.
Does love to the kids. Lovedfinding new and creative ways to
teach. Loved makingconnections. Always had a hard time
(03:19):
with administration. You know,I just didn't feel like teachers
had the framework and thesupport they needed to succeed. But
I also knew that I didn't wantto go into administration or policy.
So if I wasn't going to helpbe the change, then I needed to get
out because I was just goingto be bitter and resentful. So, you
(03:41):
know, I played around for alittle bit. I went back to school
and got a master's in Englishor fun, I guess. My poor husband.
And then I fell into a startuphere in town and into sort of a catch
all marketing role. And whatdrew me to the startup was their
mission. They had set out tohelp folks who were in difficult
(04:03):
living transitions in betweendifficult living transitions. So
that could mean cleaning out aloved one's house after they passed.
That could mean moving anelderly relative into assisted living.
And I'd lost my dad just acouple years prior, so that was something
that was like very fresh to mestill. And I've always been, you
know, pretty missionmotivated. So fell into that. Didn't
(04:27):
love the marketing aspect, butI did love the startup part. I liked
the fast pace, I liked all ofthe learnings. You know, we learned
about mergers and acquisitionsand all these things that, you know,
usually at 24 you're notgetting to experience yet. And I
also met my current CEO andcompany there. We were their client
(04:49):
at that time. So that's whenthis first seed was planted. Spent
a little bit more time in adifferent startup. You know, this
is all Covid era and so alsotrying to have young kids, which
was very difficult to do at atime when you're also trying to grow
your career. But it alsohighlighted for me, you know, how
inextricably connected ourwork lives and our personal lives
(05:14):
are. And it was always veryobvious to me when the proper framework
and proper supports were inplace for people to thrive at work.
So those couple of years thatwere really tough were also the time
that I learned, okay, I wantto continue building connections
(05:34):
with people, and I want tohelp them succeed at work. I can
very clearly see thesynchronous connection between the
company's success and theperson's success. I believe they
have a lot to offer eachother, and it's sort of an unlocking
that can happen, right? So,you know, the closest might as well
go back to school and learnsome more things. So the closest
(05:57):
official, official career forthat was hr. So I got my, my SHRM
certification and Chris Leone,our. My CEO, we kept in touch over
the years. He tried to recruitme as a, as a client success manager,
as a marketer. And, you know,I said, I love you and I love the
company and I don't want that.I don't want to be in marketing.
But he took a chance on me.I'm our first people person. We were
(06:21):
at about 32 people when Ijoined, and we're knocking on the
door of 50 now. So a lot ofgrowth in a short period of time.
And I get to build processes,I get to build connections between
people. I get to help unlockthat. That key between people thriving
(06:43):
and the company thriving. AndI'm having a lot of fun.
So how long have you been inHR now?
About four years.
Four years. Okay. Amazing. Andyou've said that you're the HR department
of one, correct?
Correct.
Okay, so I've got to ask youmy most selfish question, because
having spent most of my timein talent and things that I might
(07:06):
refer to as the fun hr, I, youknow, anytime I've looked at head
of HR roles at smallercompanies or even HR business partner
roles, frankly, elsewhere, Ithink the one thing that I've probably,
maybe I've held myself backmore on it than not is the work or
time one needs to spend in oraround or with comp and benefits,
(07:28):
employee relations, thingslike that. So I'm just curious, are
you diving into those thingsas well as the department of one,
or are you able to be pullingin, you know, fractional support
or, you know, other support inthose areas?
Yeah, department of one.
Okay.
But, but I will say, you know,I, I have the sort of phone a friend
benefit. You mentioned ourmutual connection, J.D. slaughter.
(07:51):
I, I am lucky to know peoplewho've been in this world a lot longer
than I have and I call them readily.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, I, there's, there'ssomeone here in Richmond, Virginia
that I met early on getting mySHRM certification and I think I
called her once a month forthe first year or so and it felt
(08:11):
like I was dealing with somesort of wild and crazy situation
every month that year, youknow, so, so, you know, I think if
as long as we're not too proudto lean on our resources and not,
and not too, too proud toreally, I was going to say Google,
Ask, Chat, GPT, whatever youneed to know and then check your
(08:33):
sources.
Yeah, yeah.
Open up your old textbooks,then you can find.
And like you said, SHRM is agreat, you know, resource. Yeah,
great resource. Especiallyaround some of the, like, some of
those pieces that I'm, youknow, that I was even talking about.
Cool. So let's, let's diveinto the four day work week. I'm,
you know, so you rolled it outtwo years ago. I think what I would
(08:55):
love and kind of what I'mthinking of here is, you know, let's
say there's business leadersor HR leaders listening today. I
kind of want to take it fromthe beginning a bit here and say,
where did the idea even springup for you? You know, how were the
beginnings? How did you evenstart to dip a toe into the idea
(09:16):
of a four day work week?
Yeah, great question. So, youknow, our CEO has never revealed
to me who this employee is,but even predating me, we did employee
engagement surveys and someonewrote on the employee engagement
survey one time, you know, ifyou, if you were a CEO for a day,
(09:38):
what would you do? Four daywork week.
Yeah.
And Chris kind of laughed atit. You know, then in early 2023,
the results of that big pilotin the UK came out. 61 companies,
incredible results. I think 53of them stuck with the four day work
week after that pilot. Surgesin employee satisfaction and wellness
(10:00):
and also productivity, most ofthe companies reported higher earnings
than they had ever before. Andthe component that really piqued
Chris's interest was this ideaof the operational excellence that
goes hand in hand with thefour day workweek. So not only is
it an opportunity to give yourfolks a day of rest, which we all
(10:21):
know is good for productivityin itself, you're also condensing
your work down to four days,which requires more focus. It requires
one of our core values,essentialism. It requires reviewing
everything you do and askingIs this really necessary? Does this
move the needle? Is this worthit? You know, looking at our processes,
(10:44):
is this the most efficient wayto go about this? And it also happens
that this is, you know, we'rerolling this out with the explosion
of AI. So in the digitalmarketing space, it's also, how can
we leverage AI to do our workfaster and better and then spend
the human brain time on thehigher quality, higher cognitive
(11:07):
thinking components of our work?
Yeah. Cool.
So that was sort of thebeginning of it. And I think he brought
it up to me in January and Iwas like, have you lost your mind?
So he and I had manydiscussions. We started speaking
with Joe o', Connor, who's theCEO of Work Time Reduction, and he
(11:30):
was part of that initialpilot. And so his company now helps,
but he's. They're consultants.They help folks set this, this pilot
up. Yeah, they help them findtheir own efficiencies and figure
out if this is something that,that they can be successful in. So
we had a lot of conversationswith Joe and then we timed it out
(11:52):
so that we would do a quarterof. We did. Q2 was all right, this
is, this is the goal. Everydepartment is in charge of finding
these efficiencies andassessing the work that we do and
asking, is it reallyessential, reviewing your meetings?
Do they need to be this long?Could they be a little bit shorter
in preparation? And so thenJuly 1st is when we rolled it out.
(12:16):
2023. Three.
Okay, yeah, 2023.
All right. I want to pause youthere because I want to get to your
findings and how it's going,but let me, you know, push us back
to the beginning, beginningagain for a second. So this was not
a harebrained scheme of HRScoming to this was your CEO brought
(12:37):
it to you, having sort of readabout the UK study, but I'd imagine
the two of you now, unlessgear is just small enough where CEO
says yes, you're on board andgo. Or was there some level of influence
and storytelling and buy inyou had to seek first? And how did
(13:01):
that go? How did you getpeople on board?
Yeah, great question.Certainly a level of buy in needed
to happen. At the leadershiplevel. We have a director of operations,
director of accounts, directorof digital marketing, who's in charge
of product and businessdevelopment. And everyone had their
own set of concerns andhesitations. And, you know, some
folks are naturally moreexcited by change than others, and
(13:24):
some folks are a little morecautious. So we had many discussions
at the leadership.
Can I make a couple guesses?Just for fun.
Sure, go for it.
Marketing was very excited.
Yes.
Oh, maybe not. Okay, okay,okay, listen, we will. I'll let you
pause to protect the innocent.Okay. Don't, don't worry about it.
Sales maybe more concernedbecause, you know, the concern probably
(13:50):
being, well, we need to be in,we need to be working when our customers
are working. Right. I'dimagine that's some, some level of
concern there. I'll just stopthere. I was gonna. Let me just pick
on sales and marketing.
Yeah, no, but sale sales anddirector of accounts for sure has
valid concerns because therest of the world is not on a five
day workweek. Our clients arenot on a five day work week. Sales
(14:12):
is gonna pick up the phonewhen the phone rings.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we can get into alittle bit more about how different
folks like solutions and.Yeah, yes. Yeah, we can get into
that a little bit more. Yeah,she's going to answer the phone.
Okay. But I totallyinterrupted you in talking about
kind of the, I don't know whatyou'd want to call it. The roadshow.
You had to go on to sell this.
(14:33):
Yes. So getting, getting buyin at the leadership level was the
first hurdle. Then you got toget all the managers on board. And
I think once you get toindividual contributors, they're
cautiously excited. Right. Andwe already, we have been remote since
(14:54):
before my time. We have had aflexible schedule since before my
time. Those have been tenantsof gear long before I arrived and
long before we rolled out thefour day work week. So we already
have a really supportive, whatI think is a very supportive culture
for, for our employees.
Well, so what, what was andmaybe now is. And you tell me if
(15:18):
it's better to come later. Theanswer to this question or what is
now versus what was, but whatis the current company? And in office,
I think you said hybridalready. So there's already sort
of a, you know, was therealready any hard and fast, this many
days in the office, this manynot, you know, do you already have
(15:38):
people who are permanentlyremote? Like, what's that mix?
Right? Yeah, good question. Sowe, I guess we would have been hybrid
prior to Covid based inRichmond, Virginia.
Okay.
But even then, no in office requirement.
Okay.
And then Covid hits peoplemove away. I get here, you know,
I kind of say, can we turn offthe filters? Can I search for people
(16:01):
all over the country? And Iget to go ahead to do that. And so
now we have folks.
Okay.
In 12, 13 different states, I believe.
Okay.
And we're about half outsideof Richmond. Half in Richmond. Still.
No, we. We don't have anoffice. We. We do use a co working
space occasionally.
Okay. Did you have an office.
Way back when?
(16:22):
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay, cool.So very distributed.
Yes.
Yeah, very distributed. Okay,that's cool. I just think it's good
context for anyone listeningwho's like, ooh, how do we, you know,
how do we do this? Just tohear, you know, what that looked
like for you. Okay. And thenyou said a couple other things again,
I'm trying to keep my eye on.I want to get to like, what are all
the learnings you've had alongthe way? How are things going? You
(16:45):
said two things that I wantedto dig into. One is let's start with
AI because I think that's, Ithink, you know, such a hot issue
right now. And let me rewindthe clock here. Right. So you were
starting to talk about this inlate 2022. Right. And. Or like, you
know, kind of got the, we'regoing to do this in January of 2023.
(17:08):
Right. And so if I think alittle it.
That was more like January2023 was the starting to dabble.
Thank you.
Okay. And then more likeFebruary, March, it's like, okay,
let's do it. Yeah.
And if I think back to where Iwas at the time, right. I'm in talent
at General Mills and I think,you know, they were looking at if
(17:29):
to me, AI felt within thebounds of a this, you know, Fortune
500 company. It felt like AIwas very much in its sort of, sort
of infancy and trying tofigure out, I think policies were
just starting to roll outaround what you can and can't use
(17:49):
chat GPT for, like how to keepIP and customer information off of
any external while we playaround with it and figure out are
we going to have our own, youknow, internal GPT that's firewalled
off from the world. And atthat time, I feel like people were
just barely dabbling with howto, from a job perspective, how to
(18:13):
interact with AI. Right. Fastforward to when I left my corporate
gig in late 2024 and you know,now into 2025. And it's like there's
sort of this AI explosionhappening, right, where there's probably
a bubble that's going to popat some time of quote unquote, AI
experts who are selling their,you know, of a five year old technology
(18:36):
that are selling their, youknow, services. But I'd have to talk
to some former colleagues thatare in these larger organizations
to find out like, what's lifereally like there right now. But
at least from my vantage pointit's everywhere. And perhaps it's
more the small business andentrepreneurial spaces that I'm primarily
(18:57):
swimming in where it feelslike everybody's trying to use all
the possible things andgenerative AI and agents and all
this stuff. So. But you werealready talking about in 2023, how
can we use AI for. I'mprobably going to put words in your
(19:19):
mouth a bit here, but I thinkwhat you were alluding to was things
that don't require as muchhuman interaction, human creativity.
Is there some way to automateand my guess here is some way to
automate more routine stuff orwhat was that? Because to me when
you said that I was like thatsounds so ahead of, ahead of the
times right at that time. So Iwould just love to hear a little
(19:40):
bit more about were you aheadof the times and how were you using
it then versus versus now?
Yeah, sure. Great question.And I'll say though, Kent, Chris,
R.C. i was, you know we workfor a digital marketing firm so already
it's our job to know thesethings. He, he is very, you know,
(20:01):
forward looking. He wants tobe on the cutting edge and he's so.
He is. So we were probably.But I will say he and I also had
that bubble poppingconversation just recently. So you're
right there, you're with it.
Yeah.
But yes. So the way we wereusing it then, very different than
the way we're using it now.And also cautious because we work
with credit unions and we donot download or keep customer data
(20:25):
ever. But certainly had toformulate a policy that we were going
to really get our guns toabout not uploading client data or
client information.
So you can be really clearwith your customers about kind of
like we were doing at GeneralMills, like what we can and can't
and what we are and aren't.
Yeah, yeah, yep, exactly. And,and even now, you know, even now
our CEO will say I don't putany information about our clients
(20:46):
in there because even when yousay don't train on it, it's still,
you never know, slightlyirresponsible. Right?
Yeah.
But back then I think it wasreally rudimentary and you know,
where can we get sort of thesesmall wins.
Yeah.
And now it's their entiretools. You know our advertise, our
advertising team is lookinginto, into ways to automate some
(21:07):
of their check ins and thingslike that. We have our client success
team is generating thesecustom GPTs that can help them answer
any Questions about. We alsowork with industrial manufacturers.
So these really technicalspaces that you have to have specialists
to tell you what's up. Youknow, you can develop these, feed
(21:27):
information to these customGPTs and then run reps, speaking
with them and practicing withthem and then you learn too.
Okay.
We're talking too about, aboutcreating a custom GPT for training
our managers. You know, theseare our management philosophies gear.
We believe in radical candor.We, you know, we operate on, on eos
and so giving it all theinformation we can about us and then
(21:50):
saying, here are six differentscenarios that I want you to run.
Here's the grading rubric. Goand give, you know, a really good
specific piece of, of positivefeedback and then get your grade
back and do that six moretimes with six more different scenarios.
So it is exciting. And I willsay we had a strategic initiative,
I believe last year that wasmaking AI as necessary as having
(22:15):
an Internet connection. And Ithink we've done that. I think we're
there.
Wild. Okay. If I'm notcareful, we're going to keep diving
into that, but it might comeback up because you also said essentialism.
Right. Like that, that, youknow, has been a really important.
Right. And my, I don't know,amateurish understanding of essentialism
(22:35):
for me from, for me, from myperspective is even just pausing
for a minute and saying what'sthe most important thing I need to
get done today so that I don'tspin my wheels on lower value activity.
Right. Can I really focus onthe most important things to do?
(22:56):
So and it sounds like that waspart of the mandate right away for
you all was. And so what aresome of the things that. Right. Because
you said focus andessentialism. So what are some of
the things that you've had tobe really ruthless about? Right.
No, we're not going to spendour time on that. Right. I think
a lot of companies, a lot of,I know the conversation was in HR
(23:18):
all the time, which isruthlessly prioritizing. Right. And
I think one of the favoritethings I've seen about HR lately
has, and I've heard it beforehas been put the list of things you're
doing in HR and ask yourselfif we stop doing it with the employee
based notice.
Right. But that's a good one.
Maybe a bit, maybe a bit of anaside. I apologize. But talk to me
(23:39):
about like how you've, you'vebeen bringing. Because I would, it
makes sense to me howimportant that would be for the four
day work week. Right. Focusedand Sensualism. So how have you been
bringing that to life andkeeping a focus on that?
Yeah, good question. And it,it has to be done at the organization
level, at the department leveland at the individual level. And
(24:01):
so it's different for, for allof those, those different levels.
Organizationally at the aboutthat same time, we made a commitment
internally to really stickwith these two verticals that we've
made a bunch of progress in.So, you know, we don't need to take
on any client that knocks onour door. We're going to stick with
these two verticals becausewe're really good at them. Something
(24:24):
else Chris says all the timeis we want to be. We don't want to.
Basically, you don't want tobe known for what you're worst at.
So don't take on, you know, if.
We'Re not being mediocreacross a million things versus excellent
at.
Exactly, exactly. Socommitting to excellence in our verticals
was something we did at theorganizational level. Cool. I think
(24:44):
a lot of at the departmentlevel, specifically for me and hr.
And I think you nailed it withthe sign on the wall. Acknowledge
that every time you say yes tosomething, you're saying no to something
else. So weigh this yes thatyou're saying now against something
that's probably going to comealong here in a little bit. And is
that, are you comfortable withthat being a no? Because, you know,
(25:05):
they can't both be yeses andyou do them well with excellence.
Something else. This one, youknow, also I strive for all the time.
What is the minimum viableproduct for this? What's its simplest
version? You know what?Because also often that's the easiest
for people to use andimplement. So keep it simple, as
(25:27):
simple as you possibly can.
Okay. I feel like I might havesidetracked us for far too long and
I apologize for that becauseyou just said some things that really
popped for me. So you startedto roll it out. You did do this roll
roadshow and had to starthaving conversation around, you know,
focus, essentialism. How areyou using AI? I don't know where
that brings us to in thetimeline from 2023, but I'd love
(25:50):
to hear more of the. The journey.
Sure. And you know, I thinksomething that's interesting, people
might not be aware of thatthere are several different models
of the four day workweek thatdifferent folks roll out. So I can
tell you a little bit aboutthe one we chose and why and you
know, laying out expectationsand things like that, because that
was a huge part of gettingeverybody on Board is being sure
we're clear on expectationsand continuing to clarify those.
(26:13):
We just revised them againlast month. So we are on the 180,
100 model of the four day workweek, which means we do 100% of the
work impact and output, notnecessarily tasks and 80% of the
time for 100% of the pay. Sothis is not a consolidated, this,
(26:35):
you know, people always ask,is it 10, is it 10 fours? No, it's
not. We have reduced the timewe are spending on work, we've reduced
the time we're spending doingclient work on billable hours. And
so that's where it reallycomes in. You've got to be doing
the things that drive thelargest impact. We also decided instead
(26:55):
of doing staggered days off,we would do a universal day off.
So we do Fridays off. However,Friday is not a weekend day, it's
not a Saturday, it's not aSunday. So if you're going to be
completely out of pocket andunavailable, you still have to put
in your pto, which we haveunlimited pto. So it's also, it's
(27:19):
okay. It's more communicationat that point than it's communication.
It's the communication andbeing sure we have coverage in place.
So if you're going to be outof pocket completely, treat it like
a day off. Be sure you've gotcoverage. Communicate to everybody
in your pod and on your teamthat that's what's going on and this
is your coverage. Otherwise,if you're a client facing person,
you're expected to check youremail three times. Once in the morning,
(27:40):
once in the middle of the dayand once in the afternoon. And if
you're a project manager or ifyou're on the production side, you're
supposed to check slack threetimes a day. So the idea is if a
client comes in with somethingurgent, the client success manager
visits the urgency tree todetermine is this something that
needs to be done right now?And if it is, they send the slack
(28:01):
to the internal teams thatneed to know and it can be done by
the end of that day. So wehave that system in place for, for
capturing those, those urgenttasks. We just did a sort of follow
up survey. It's not, you know,I don't think that the urgent tasks
are coming in all that often.I think it's more about preparing
(28:23):
for the next week.
Yeah.
That people are wanting to do,you know.
Okay, so I have a couplequestions because I want to make
sure I understood the languagebecause I think I got a little lost
in the language on the 80, 100part. So tell me if I'm understanding
or not. So we didn't sayyou're now working 4 tens. You're
working for regular day iseights, you know, or whatever for
(28:46):
a sal, you know, whatever asalaried level person's expectations
would be. And if you're out,let us know. But otherwise we're
expecting some level ofpresence in order to handle urgent
things. Particularly my guessis customer needs on a Friday. So
let me pause there. Am I following?
(29:07):
That's correct, yes.
So then in my mind, if I canjust play it out as like, if I was
working that way, what wouldthat mean for me on a Friday? On
a Friday, that would mean forme I can mow my lawn. I can maybe
get instead of what theweekend can tend to be for adults
and even separate that out alittle bit for parents as well, which
(29:27):
is jamming everything youdidn't have time for in the week.
So plowing through, you know,laundry for one to five or six humans,
yard work, housework, youknow, other errands one needs to
run. Instead of jamming thatinto Saturday and Sunday, maybe Friday,
because I know I need to checkmy email a few times during the day.
(29:48):
I'm going to do some stuffaround the house that relieves some
pressure for my weekend. Mowthe lawn, do some laundry, you know,
maybe some house projectswhere I can still check my email.
Something urgent comes up,great. I'm going to drop and take
care of what needs to gettaken care of. But kind of making
it so that my. It's almosthelping you maximize the weekend
(30:12):
than say, quote, unquote, onlyworking for four days if I'm.
That's so productive. Okay,that's spot on.
That's really cool.
That's what it is for sure.And another thing, you know, something
that I certainly use it forand I think others do as well, is
it's deep work time. Right.So, you know, I get the kids.
(30:34):
No meetings allowed.
Yeah, no meetings and no. Andnobody slacks me for the most part.
Right. So. And you know, inhr, you got things coming at you
all day every. There's reallynot good deep work time in the work
day, Monday through Thursday.So, you know, this. These. These
projects that are veryimportant to me and that I want to
move forward that I used tohave to spend maybe Sunday night
(30:55):
or a weeknight on. I get thekids off to school, I get to go to
yoga, and then I come sit downfor two hours and lock in.
Yeah, yeah.
And there's something, youknow, there's like the pressure is,
is released. So your brain iseven more open for creative thinking.
So you, you hit, you hit itspot on. That's, that's what it is.
And it's really cool.
(31:15):
That's not at all what I wasexpecting to hear. Right. I was expecting
to hear like a 4 10, which Iknow you said there's other models
for it, which I don't think,you know, perhaps I'll have to have
you come back on for four daywork week number two day. But that
sounds really cool. It soundsreally cool and doable. But to your
(31:35):
point, if you're not going toextend to 4 tens, then now I can
see even with 4 tens, I cansee it, but I can see it even more
how important, you know,essentialism is. How do we reduce
low value time spent or lowvalue activity from being done well?
(31:57):
And you know, the human brainis not capable of focusing for 10
hours at a time, frankly, noteight either. Right. So the work
that you're going to.
Get, hardly for more than 60to 90 minutes at a time, but sure.
And also the work's going toexpand to fill the time that you
did it.
Yeah. All right, let me box usin a little bit because I'm trying
to just want to watch thetime. But I think you and I are going
(32:18):
to have to debrief and frameup conversation number two, which
I'm not going to make youpublicly agree to on the air. So
results I'd love to hearabout, you know, how are things going?
Yeah, great. So to tell youabout results, I think I need to
tell you about what we'vemeasured. So the metrics that we've
(32:40):
kept track of since thebeginning of this and that is time
spent on tasks and then lotsof lagging metrics. So our nps, our
nbs, and then all of our, ourrevenue goals and all of our revenue
metrics and then finally ourENPs, our employee satisfaction.
(33:00):
So I have data from basicallyevery three months for that first
year and a half.
Yeah.
And so for that first year anda half, productivity stayed the same.
Time spent on tasks, defre NPSstayed the same. NBS stayed the same.
We hit all of our revenuegoals and our ENPs surged. We were
(33:23):
at about 50 in July of 23 andwe got all the way up to like 85.
Yeah. So but you have to know,and we had talked about this going
in, that the novelty of that'sgoing to wear off, first of all.
Right. Second of all, it Takescontinuous upkeep. I mean we've had
(33:46):
20 folks join since then,since that time. So. And those folks
weren't here prior to the fourday work week. So really kind of
indoctrinating them into thisis how we're doing things now. Also
they usually, you know,haven't experienced this at other
places. So coming in andknowing, all right, it's, this is
(34:07):
a place where I really need tobuckle down and get my work done.
But I'll be rewarded for it ifI do that. So really every, you know,
the first 18 months,everything was incredible. Great
results.
One result, really quick.Okay, so you were just saying you
got some new data that you'relooking at?
Yes, yes. So we just got somenew data last quarter. And generally
(34:32):
speaking, this data says, youknow, I, Most people about 25% work
a little bit at least oneFriday a month. Another 22% work
at least a little bit twoFridays a month. And then another
22% say I choose to work someon Fridays because I use that flexibility
(34:55):
elsewhere in my week. So, youknow, especially folks with kids
in school where you're gonna,you're gonna want that uninterrupted
time, but you can also takeoff at 3 and go get your kids. So
it's that level of flexibilitythat we've introduced that I think
people have really come toappreciate and rely on. And, and
that's the value that they seein it. That and what I mentioned
(35:18):
earlier, which is that headsdown focus time where people aren't
pinging you and you don't haveany meeting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Soyeah, like you said, maybe I, kids,
school starts at eight so I'm,I'm not gonna be like online until,
(35:40):
or like, you know, my, my kidsmiddle school doesn't start until
9:30. Right. Doors open at 9.
Wow.
Right. So like I might beonline from 8 to 9 and then I'm going
to be off from 9 to 9:30ish,and I'm back on at 9, you know, so
maybe I'll flex. I mean that'shardly any time away, but you know,
(36:01):
I'll flex some of that time byworking a little bit on Friday. And
that's acceptable with theexception of. Right. And I'd imagine.
So here's a question for youis how, how much do you have to reinforce
and guard against schedulingmeetings on Friday? Because I'd imagine
it's so tempting.
Yes, it's a great question andit is tempting and it's something
(36:22):
we just reinforced. So we, wehad that survey last quarter and
really one of the biggestfindings was people aren't totally
clear on the expectations. Sowe revisited the expectations we
wrote at the beginning. Wetweaked them a little bit so that
they reflected how we actuallyare operating. We reiterated them
to the managers, we sent themout with the survey results. And
(36:42):
then I'm actually going tohave everybody sign a copy. They
don't know that yet. They'regoing to. Everybody's going to sign
a copy from our HRIs so thatthey acknowledge that they know what
the expectations are. Andthose are Friday meetings are a last
result, a last resort. Forexample, our client facing team can
do all they can to avoidclient meetings on Fridays, but sometimes
you just can't.
(37:02):
Right, right, right.
And so they'll take that, youknow, and then there are certain
weeks, for example, next weekwe have our biannual in person retreat.
So we fly everybody intoRichmond. It makes for a very short
working week as far as taskwork and client meetings and things
go. So occasionally on weekslike that, there might be a meeting
that pops up on a Friday. Butit should be an absolute last resort
(37:25):
and it can be very tempting.
It should be the exception andnot the correct.
Correct, correct.
So. Well, can I. Let me ask aquestion about that and then if you
can come back to it. Becausethe thing that. So I think over the
last couple of years,organizations have been pushing more
to get people back in offices.I know gear is primarily a distributed
(37:49):
and virtual. So I get that.But the parallel that's in my head
is especially as organizationsare, there was a big push this spring.
I think this was probably thebiggest push all at once. And I get
it. Some companies just builttheir office right before the pandemic
hit and or even, you know,gender mills where I worked, this
(38:10):
is not something they said.But I look at, they have a huge plot
of land, a lot of green grassthat they're watering and keeping
nice and paying groundskeepersfor. In a giant building that in
Minnesota you have to keeppipes from freezing. Right. So they're
probably, they're having toheat and cool this giant building.
Like I, I get from a nuts andbolts perspective that we've got
(38:34):
to get people into the office.Right. But what I've seen happen
and I'm gonna get, I'm gonnaget back to gear. I promise. We're
getting there. We're goingaround the cul de sac level. Right.
But part of why I think somany companies had to push for with
a million reasons, but a bigthing I've seen time and time again
is we have a really hard timemanaging by exception. And so therefore
(38:55):
we have to put blanket rulesin place and say everyone's coming
back this many days because somany companies tried to have policies
that didn't have teeth inthem. And what it comes down to,
and this is where I'm gettingto my question for you, which is
I would imagine the company'ssmall enough, so take this with a
grain of salt, but I'd imaginethis comes down to managers managing
(39:22):
their people and payingattention to performance and having
radically. Candid, as you weresaying, radical candor and having
conversations about, you know,perhaps not spending any time on
work on Fridays isn't workingfor you. How do we, you know, how
do we do that? Right. So Ithink that's the thing that popped
(39:43):
in my head is like, how muchare you needing to manage your managers,
frankly?
Right.
And hold them to the highexpectation of how they're managing
their people and holding themto these expectations. Thank you
for coming on that really longjourney with me.
It was fun. It was great.
Okay.
It was so good. No, that,that's a great point. And something
(40:06):
else I was going to say thatthat surfaced in that, in that survey
is that people want to beclear how much they value the autonomy
that they have. So I thinkwhat we're striving for and what
we try to train our managersto, to be on the lookout for is,
you know, it's, we, we stilltrack hours because we have to, to,
(40:30):
to be sure we're payingattention to utilization and capacity
and knowing when we need tohire someone. But really, you're
keeping tabs on the outputs.Right? It's, it's high autonomy,
high flexibility, high trust,and high expectations. So the outputs
need to be there. You need tobe asking about them. Expectations
(40:51):
don't change either. Right. Sojust because we're working one fewer
day in the week doesn't meanthat you're not expected to get this
internal project done that yousigned up for and are excited to
do now. We are perfectlyreasonable. And there are times when
the client work is rolling inat a pace that everybody's just really
(41:13):
trying to stay afloat. And atthose, yeah, put that internal project
on the back burner. But forthe most part, we expect everybody
to, you know, contribute notonly to their everyday work in those
client and those clientprojects, but also we're a really
fast growing digital marketingagency. And so it's everybody's job
to stay on the forefront ofwhat we can provide for our clients
(41:35):
to be sure they're gettingwhat they need, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I'dimagine, especially with, with the
size. Right. And I think whatyou said, if I can put in, maybe
make sure I'm following is.And I knew this from when I was in
a consultancy, right. Like,profit's not a dirty word. It's what
keeps the lights on. It's whatpays everybody's paychecks. And so
(41:57):
perhaps that's part of theprioritization and essentialism is
like, is this in service of aclient project? Is this in service
of revenue generating work?And if not, that is probably something
to be weighing, you know, doesthat fall farther down the list of
priorities then?
(42:17):
Right. Yeah, if it's, if it'sfor fun, maybe that's a Friday thing,
you know, if it's notsomething that's gonna, that's gonna
drive results.
So, yeah, cool. Fun. There'sso many other questions I could dig
into, but what a really coolstory. So before I give us a violent
shove into the advice column,sounds like things are going great,
(42:41):
results are looking great andthere is no plan to adjust. But from
what I'm hearing is you needto keep an eye on what you're measuring,
you know, measure what getsmeasured, gets managed. Right. So
if you're not, you know, makesure you know what you're measuring
so that you can. It soundslike you've multiple times in the
(43:02):
last couple of years had tosort of reinforce what the expectations
are and, and even, or evenadjust the expectations because we
had to. Look, you know, you'vebeen learning, you've been learning
as you've. It's not likeyou've implemented this at four other
companies. Right. So you.
Right.
You know.
Right. And you know what, whatelse I'll say is that this is not,
(43:25):
this doesn't make us immune toevery other issue that companies
face. Right. Actually, I thinkJoe o' Connor said, maybe it's not
Joe, but I'll attribute it tohim anyway. He said the four day
work week doesn't solveproblems, it surfaces them. So when
we, you know, when that sortof efficiency is falling to the wayside,
(43:45):
when we have processes thatare far too complicated or when we're
getting outside of our, ourcore niche areas, it shows faster
because there's less time tobe working on that stuff. So we're
constantly working on that. Imean, we have planned at our retreat
next week to, to buckle downinto our pods and figure out what
can be discarded or changed tokeep us moving at this pace. And
(44:06):
so I'll also say, you know,transparently, our ENPs dipped at
the beginning of this year,but, you know, so did everyone else's.
You know, and, and that isnot, you know, our, our CEO will
tell you I do not rest on thatas an excuse. I'm constantly looking
for, okay, what can we bedoing better? What are our people
saying? How do we need toaddress that? So it, it's not a silver
(44:28):
bullet and it doesn't make youimmune to.
Yeah.
To all the other waves thatare crashing down.
Cool. Yeah, I, I, So the spacethat I primarily play in. Right.
Is executive coaching,leadership development. So I would
imagine you don't need to saya word when I say this, but I would
imagine. Right. Like peoplewho are excellent at leading and
(44:49):
people who are struggling atleading. To your point that you're
attributing to Joe o', Connor,it becomes very obvious. Right. With,
with how things are condensedand the need to really have sort
of be vigilant foressentialism, essentially. Yeah.
Yeah. There's less time tohide in.
Yeah. Wow. Okay. I always askeverybody to come with two pieces
(45:10):
of advice and a grab bag. Sothe first is, you know, what's your,
and it could be related tothis, it could be something else
that's just pulled your focustoo, which is, you know, what's one
piece of advice you have forany people, leaders who are listening
today?
You know, I don't know if thisis advice, but it is my personal
sort of people operationsphilosophy. And I stole it from,
(45:31):
I mean, I originally saw it inDanny Meyer's book Setting this Table.
I think it's also like a RitzCarlton sort of radical hospitality
theory, which is, is that ofthe virtuous cycle. And essentially
it's, if you're taking care ofyour people, they'll take care of
your business and, and takingcare of. And you're going to think
that this is funny to say onan episode about the four day work
(45:52):
week. Taking care of yourpeople doesn't mean throwing perks
at them. It means treatingthem like people, you know, not cogs.
It means giving them autonomyand trust and flexibility and the
ability to bring their wholefocused, concentrated selves to work
because you've given them timefor rest and time with their families
and time to catch up aroundthe house and things they need to
(46:15):
do. So. And I think, and alsojust this is not really related to
four day work week, butrespecting them as creators and as
relationship buildersthemselves. This part resonates with
me, the Ritz Carlton, it's, Ithink their mission is still we're
ladies and gentlemen servingladies and gentlemen. So treating
your people like the subjectmatter experts that they are and
(46:37):
they'll be more than willingto take care of your clients for
you.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So what'syour advice for those who support
leaders out there?
This is definitely not advicebecause this is something that I
just tell myself all the time.This is like something I'm working
on for myself this year. SoI'll just share it with you in case
it resonates for somebodyelse. But create systems and framework
(47:01):
that enable and empower yourmanagers to lead. So I have a habit
of over buffering and I have ahabit of being the bridge instead
of building the bridge. Butthat's not scalable and it doesn't
teach anybody anything. So youknow, for example, working on adjusting
(47:21):
our annual reviews this year,our 360 reviews and I want to make
them more frequent, I want tomake them simpler just to build that
radical candor muscle in our,in our people. And there was a lot
of concern at the leadershiplevel that this is going to be a
huge administrative burden. Idon't, it's not going to work well
(47:42):
if it's something that I'mjust taking on and reaching out to
people and nagging them andtapping them on the shoulder to do
it. So what it needs to becomeis part of managers KPIs and so their
managers need to be saying,hey, how'd your quarterly conversations
go this quarter? What's yourfeedback score on, you know, the
custom GPT that we built? Canyou show me a few of the examples?
(48:04):
So putting it back on peopleso that they're developing and they're
learning and they're figuringit out on their own and you're not
building yourself into these systems.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I say about,you know, with leaders it kind of,
it resonates with just leaderscoaching. Right. Is, is, you know,
yeah, sure, you can roll upyour sleeves and just jump in there
(48:26):
and do it. But are you thenbuilding capability and are people
learning how to do it whenyou're not there? Right. I love that.
So and grab, what's, what'syour grab bag item for today?
Yeah, my grab bag is a veryfour day work week focus and it's
just don't be afraid toexplain experiment.
Yeah.
You know, I think we're afraidto play. Especially in hr. We're
(48:46):
afraid to play. We're nervous.But you know, I think our CEO is
a really good example of this.You know, initially he said, no way,
we're not doing that, and thenwas not afraid to say, all right,
let's give it a try and, andadjust accordingly. I mentioned earlier
about, you know, he's superexcited about AI, has been from the
very beginning and isn'tafraid to say, actually, you know
(49:08):
what, I do think there's abubble coming. And, you know, I do
think that we're saying somesort of reckless and dangerous things
about AI that just aren'ttrue. So I'm going to amend what
I said earlier. And itencourages other people to experiment
and it encourages people to,you know, not be afraid to try something
that might have them fall intheir face, but at least they tried.
Yeah, love that. Yeah, you gotto build in that risk tolerance.
(49:31):
So that such a catchphrase,perhaps, but the like fail forward
mentality of like.
Right.
We shouldn't be so dug in asto not adjust or do a 180 because
it's not working. Right.
Right. Yeah.
Awesome. Well, Morgan, thankyou so much for coming on today.
This was perhaps way too muchfun for me, and so hopefully you
(49:52):
enjoyed it as well. And Ithink our listeners and those who
are sort of four day work weekcurious will get a lot from this.
And so I just reallyappreciate you taking, taking the
time to come on the podcast today.
Thanks, Kent. I had a great time.
Yeah. All right, take care.
You too. Bye. Bye.
That brings us to the end ofour episode. Thanks for listening.
I'd encourage you to head onover to my website, Kent Coach, and
(50:14):
start a conversation with methere or check out my promotion playbook
at Kent Coach Playbook. Beforeyou go on with your day, I ask that
you please take a moment toleave a rating and a review wherever
you listen to podcasts. Fivestars. That helps put this podcast
in front of more eyes andears. Until next time, take it easy.
If you're taking care of yourpeople, they'll take care of your
business and taking care of.And you're going to think that this
is funny to say on an episodeabout the four day work week. Taking
care of your people doesn'tmean throwing perks at them. It means
treating them like people youknow, not cogs. It means giving them
autonomy and trust andflexibility and the ability to bring
(00:28):
their whole focused,concentrated selves to work because
you've given them time forrest and time with their families
and time to catch up aroundthe house and things they need to
do.
Hi there and welcome to theStep Up Expert Voices for Leadership
Growth. I'm your host, KentKnievel. Every week I talk to experts
who focus on helping leadersstep up their leadership game. If
you're new to the show, thenon whatever platform you're using,
(00:50):
I encourage you to subscribeso you never miss an episode. One
last thing. As a leadershipdevelopment consultant and executive
coach, I have a particularinterest in supporting recent internally
promoted leaders. If that'syou, or if you support a leader who
has been recently promoted, Iencourage you to visit my website
at Kent Coach Playbook anddownload a free copy of my 90 day
(01:10):
blueprint filled withpractical advice for you or the leader
you support in hitting theground running and truly stepping
up to their new leadershiplevel. Without further ado, on with
the show. Welcome everyone.Today I'm really excited for our
guest today. We're going to betalking about the four day work week
and I'm going to say it nowbecause I almost said it during pre
(01:30):
recording was the four hourworkweek but that is Tim Ferriss
book. No, we are here to talkabout the four day work week. And
with me for this conversationtoday is Morgan August. And I have
to look at my notes becauseI'm going to forget it right away.
I apologize Morgan, directorof people operations at GEAR and
who rolled out a four day workweek two years ago. And so I wanted
(01:54):
to bring you on today when Iheard about this mutual connection
of ours put us in touch newslike you got to talk to Morgan. They
did this. They did the fourday work week. You know it's great
story, you should hear aboutit. And so so glad that you agreed
to come on the podcast todayand tell us all about it.
Yeah, thanks Kent for havingme. I'm really excited to be here.
(02:14):
And you know, just like yousay, you might say the four hour
work week, I might say webstrategies because we just recently
rebranded to gear. So forgiveme if do that. Our company's name
is Gear.
Perfect. Thank you. And beforewe get into the topic, I just think
people like to hear,especially any sort of early or even
curious mid careerprofessionals out there that get
(02:36):
to hear these interviews.Would just love to hear as much of
your sort of career arc,career story leading up to today
as you're willing to get into.So would love to hear, love to hear
about your hero's journey.
Yeah, sure. And you know, ifthere's anything I've learned listening
to your podcast so far, it'sthat most HR professionals did not
start there, they fell into it.
(02:56):
Yeah.
So same for me. I went toschool, I got my bachelor's in English
and my master's in secondaryeducation. So I was a middle and
high school English teacher.Loved the kids.
Yeah.
Does love to the kids. Lovedfinding new and creative ways to
teach. Loved makingconnections. Always had a hard time
(03:19):
with administration. You know,I just didn't feel like teachers
had the framework and thesupport they needed to succeed. But
I also knew that I didn't wantto go into administration or policy.
So if I wasn't going to helpbe the change, then I needed to get
out because I was just goingto be bitter and resentful. So, you
(03:41):
know, I played around for alittle bit. I went back to school
and got a master's in Englishor fun, I guess. My poor husband.
And then I fell into a startuphere in town and into sort of a catch
all marketing role. And whatdrew me to the startup was their
mission. They had set out tohelp folks who were in difficult
(04:03):
living transitions in betweendifficult living transitions. So
that could mean cleaning out aloved one's house after they passed.
That could mean moving anelderly relative into assisted living.
And I'd lost my dad just acouple years prior, so that was something
that was like very fresh to mestill. And I've always been, you
know, pretty missionmotivated. So fell into that. Didn't
(04:27):
love the marketing aspect, butI did love the startup part. I liked
the fast pace, I liked all ofthe learnings. You know, we learned
about mergers and acquisitionsand all these things that, you know,
usually at 24 you're notgetting to experience yet. And I
also met my current CEO andcompany there. We were their client
(04:49):
at that time. So that's whenthis first seed was planted. Spent
a little bit more time in adifferent startup. You know, this
is all Covid era and so alsotrying to have young kids, which
was very difficult to do at atime when you're also trying to grow
your career. But it alsohighlighted for me, you know, how
inextricably connected ourwork lives and our personal lives
(05:14):
are. And it was always veryobvious to me when the proper framework
and proper supports were inplace for people to thrive at work.
So those couple of years thatwere really tough were also the time
that I learned, okay, I wantto continue building connections
(05:34):
with people, and I want tohelp them succeed at work. I can
very clearly see thesynchronous connection between the
company's success and theperson's success. I believe they
have a lot to offer eachother, and it's sort of an unlocking
that can happen, right? So,you know, the closest might as well
go back to school and learnsome more things. So the closest
(05:57):
official, official career forthat was hr. So I got my, my SHRM
certification and Chris Leone,our. My CEO, we kept in touch over
the years. He tried to recruitme as a, as a client success manager,
as a marketer. And, you know,I said, I love you and I love the
company and I don't want that.I don't want to be in marketing.
But he took a chance on me.I'm our first people person. We were
(06:21):
at about 32 people when Ijoined, and we're knocking on the
door of 50 now. So a lot ofgrowth in a short period of time.
And I get to build processes,I get to build connections between
people. I get to help unlockthat. That key between people thriving
(06:43):
and the company thriving. AndI'm having a lot of fun.
So how long have you been inHR now?
About four years.
Four years. Okay. Amazing. Andyou've said that you're the HR department
of one, correct?
Correct.
Okay, so I've got to ask youmy most selfish question, because
having spent most of my timein talent and things that I might
(07:06):
refer to as the fun hr, I, youknow, anytime I've looked at head
of HR roles at smallercompanies or even HR business partner
roles, frankly, elsewhere, Ithink the one thing that I've probably,
maybe I've held myself backmore on it than not is the work or
time one needs to spend in oraround or with comp and benefits,
(07:28):
employee relations, thingslike that. So I'm just curious, are
you diving into those thingsas well as the department of one,
or are you able to be pullingin, you know, fractional support
or, you know, other support inthose areas?
Yeah, department of one.
Okay.
But, but I will say, you know,I, I have the sort of phone a friend
benefit. You mentioned ourmutual connection, J.D. slaughter.
(07:51):
I, I am lucky to know peoplewho've been in this world a lot longer
than I have and I call them readily.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, I, there's, there'ssomeone here in Richmond, Virginia
that I met early on getting mySHRM certification and I think I
called her once a month forthe first year or so and it felt
(08:11):
like I was dealing with somesort of wild and crazy situation
every month that year, youknow, so, so, you know, I think if
as long as we're not too proudto lean on our resources and not,
and not too, too proud toreally, I was going to say Google,
Ask, Chat, GPT, whatever youneed to know and then check your
(08:33):
sources.
Yeah, yeah.
Open up your old textbooks,then you can find.
And like you said, SHRM is agreat, you know, resource. Yeah,
great resource. Especiallyaround some of the, like, some of
those pieces that I'm, youknow, that I was even talking about.
Cool. So let's, let's diveinto the four day work week. I'm,
you know, so you rolled it outtwo years ago. I think what I would
(08:55):
love and kind of what I'mthinking of here is, you know, let's
say there's business leadersor HR leaders listening today. I
kind of want to take it fromthe beginning a bit here and say,
where did the idea even springup for you? You know, how were the
beginnings? How did you evenstart to dip a toe into the idea
(09:16):
of a four day work week?
Yeah, great question. So, youknow, our CEO has never revealed
to me who this employee is,but even predating me, we did employee
engagement surveys and someonewrote on the employee engagement
survey one time, you know, ifyou, if you were a CEO for a day,
(09:38):
what would you do? Four daywork week.
Yeah.
And Chris kind of laughed atit. You know, then in early 2023,
the results of that big pilotin the UK came out. 61 companies,
incredible results. I think 53of them stuck with the four day work
week after that pilot. Surgesin employee satisfaction and wellness
(10:00):
and also productivity, most ofthe companies reported higher earnings
than they had ever before. Andthe component that really piqued
Chris's interest was this ideaof the operational excellence that
goes hand in hand with thefour day workweek. So not only is
it an opportunity to give yourfolks a day of rest, which we all
(10:21):
know is good for productivityin itself, you're also condensing
your work down to four days,which requires more focus. It requires
one of our core values,essentialism. It requires reviewing
everything you do and askingIs this really necessary? Does this
move the needle? Is this worthit? You know, looking at our processes,
(10:44):
is this the most efficient wayto go about this? And it also happens
that this is, you know, we'rerolling this out with the explosion
of AI. So in the digitalmarketing space, it's also, how can
we leverage AI to do our workfaster and better and then spend
the human brain time on thehigher quality, higher cognitive
(11:07):
thinking components of our work?
Yeah. Cool.
So that was sort of thebeginning of it. And I think he brought
it up to me in January and Iwas like, have you lost your mind?
So he and I had manydiscussions. We started speaking
with Joe o', Connor, who's theCEO of Work Time Reduction, and he
(11:30):
was part of that initialpilot. And so his company now helps,
but he's. They're consultants.They help folks set this, this pilot
up. Yeah, they help them findtheir own efficiencies and figure
out if this is something that,that they can be successful in. So
we had a lot of conversationswith Joe and then we timed it out
(11:52):
so that we would do a quarterof. We did. Q2 was all right, this
is, this is the goal. Everydepartment is in charge of finding
these efficiencies andassessing the work that we do and
asking, is it reallyessential, reviewing your meetings?
Do they need to be this long?Could they be a little bit shorter
in preparation? And so thenJuly 1st is when we rolled it out.
(12:16):
2023. Three.
Okay, yeah, 2023.
All right. I want to pause youthere because I want to get to your
findings and how it's going,but let me, you know, push us back
to the beginning, beginningagain for a second. So this was not
a harebrained scheme of HRScoming to this was your CEO brought
(12:37):
it to you, having sort of readabout the UK study, but I'd imagine
the two of you now, unlessgear is just small enough where CEO
says yes, you're on board andgo. Or was there some level of influence
and storytelling and buy inyou had to seek first? And how did
(13:01):
that go? How did you getpeople on board?
Yeah, great question.Certainly a level of buy in needed
to happen. At the leadershiplevel. We have a director of operations,
director of accounts, directorof digital marketing, who's in charge
of product and businessdevelopment. And everyone had their
own set of concerns andhesitations. And, you know, some
folks are naturally moreexcited by change than others, and
(13:24):
some folks are a little morecautious. So we had many discussions
at the leadership.
Can I make a couple guesses?Just for fun.
Sure, go for it.
Marketing was very excited.
Yes.
Oh, maybe not. Okay, okay,okay, listen, we will. I'll let you
pause to protect the innocent.Okay. Don't, don't worry about it.
Sales maybe more concernedbecause, you know, the concern probably
(13:50):
being, well, we need to be in,we need to be working when our customers
are working. Right. I'dimagine that's some, some level of
concern there. I'll just stopthere. I was gonna. Let me just pick
on sales and marketing.
Yeah, no, but sale sales anddirector of accounts for sure has
valid concerns because therest of the world is not on a five
day workweek. Our clients arenot on a five day work week. Sales
(14:12):
is gonna pick up the phonewhen the phone rings.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we can get into alittle bit more about how different
folks like solutions and.Yeah, yes. Yeah, we can get into
that a little bit more. Yeah,she's going to answer the phone.
Okay. But I totallyinterrupted you in talking about
kind of the, I don't know whatyou'd want to call it. The roadshow.
You had to go on to sell this.
(14:33):
Yes. So getting, getting buyin at the leadership level was the
first hurdle. Then you got toget all the managers on board. And
I think once you get toindividual contributors, they're
cautiously excited. Right. Andwe already, we have been remote since
(14:54):
before my time. We have had aflexible schedule since before my
time. Those have been tenantsof gear long before I arrived and
long before we rolled out thefour day work week. So we already
have a really supportive, whatI think is a very supportive culture
for, for our employees.
Well, so what, what was andmaybe now is. And you tell me if
(15:18):
it's better to come later. Theanswer to this question or what is
now versus what was, but whatis the current company? And in office,
I think you said hybridalready. So there's already sort
of a, you know, was therealready any hard and fast, this many
days in the office, this manynot, you know, do you already have
(15:38):
people who are permanentlyremote? Like, what's that mix?
Right? Yeah, good question. Sowe, I guess we would have been hybrid
prior to Covid based inRichmond, Virginia.
Okay.
But even then, no in office requirement.
Okay.
And then Covid hits peoplemove away. I get here, you know,
I kind of say, can we turn offthe filters? Can I search for people
(16:01):
all over the country? And Iget to go ahead to do that. And so
now we have folks.
Okay.
In 12, 13 different states, I believe.
Okay.
And we're about half outsideof Richmond. Half in Richmond. Still.
No, we. We don't have anoffice. We. We do use a co working
space occasionally.
Okay. Did you have an office.
Way back when?
(16:22):
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay, cool.So very distributed.
Yes.
Yeah, very distributed. Okay,that's cool. I just think it's good
context for anyone listeningwho's like, ooh, how do we, you know,
how do we do this? Just tohear, you know, what that looked
like for you. Okay. And thenyou said a couple other things again,
I'm trying to keep my eye on.I want to get to like, what are all
the learnings you've had alongthe way? How are things going? You
(16:45):
said two things that I wantedto dig into. One is let's start with
AI because I think that's, Ithink, you know, such a hot issue
right now. And let me rewindthe clock here. Right. So you were
starting to talk about this inlate 2022. Right. And. Or like, you
know, kind of got the, we'regoing to do this in January of 2023.
(17:08):
Right. And so if I think alittle it.
That was more like January2023 was the starting to dabble.
Thank you.
Okay. And then more likeFebruary, March, it's like, okay,
let's do it. Yeah.
And if I think back to where Iwas at the time, right. I'm in talent
at General Mills and I think,you know, they were looking at if
(17:29):
to me, AI felt within thebounds of a this, you know, Fortune
500 company. It felt like AIwas very much in its sort of, sort
of infancy and trying tofigure out, I think policies were
just starting to roll outaround what you can and can't use
(17:49):
chat GPT for, like how to keepIP and customer information off of
any external while we playaround with it and figure out are
we going to have our own, youknow, internal GPT that's firewalled
off from the world. And atthat time, I feel like people were
just barely dabbling with howto, from a job perspective, how to
(18:13):
interact with AI. Right. Fastforward to when I left my corporate
gig in late 2024 and you know,now into 2025. And it's like there's
sort of this AI explosionhappening, right, where there's probably
a bubble that's going to popat some time of quote unquote, AI
experts who are selling their,you know, of a five year old technology
(18:36):
that are selling their, youknow, services. But I'd have to talk
to some former colleagues thatare in these larger organizations
to find out like, what's lifereally like there right now. But
at least from my vantage pointit's everywhere. And perhaps it's
more the small business andentrepreneurial spaces that I'm primarily
(18:57):
swimming in where it feelslike everybody's trying to use all
the possible things andgenerative AI and agents and all
this stuff. So. But you werealready talking about in 2023, how
can we use AI for. I'mprobably going to put words in your
(19:19):
mouth a bit here, but I thinkwhat you were alluding to was things
that don't require as muchhuman interaction, human creativity.
Is there some way to automateand my guess here is some way to
automate more routine stuff orwhat was that? Because to me when
you said that I was like thatsounds so ahead of, ahead of the
times right at that time. So Iwould just love to hear a little
(19:40):
bit more about were you aheadof the times and how were you using
it then versus versus now?
Yeah, sure. Great question.And I'll say though, Kent, Chris,
R.C. i was, you know we workfor a digital marketing firm so already
it's our job to know thesethings. He, he is very, you know,
(20:01):
forward looking. He wants tobe on the cutting edge and he's so.
He is. So we were probably.But I will say he and I also had
that bubble poppingconversation just recently. So you're
right there, you're with it.
Yeah.
But yes. So the way we wereusing it then, very different than
the way we're using it now.And also cautious because we work
with credit unions and we donot download or keep customer data
(20:25):
ever. But certainly had toformulate a policy that we were going
to really get our guns toabout not uploading client data or
client information.
So you can be really clearwith your customers about kind of
like we were doing at GeneralMills, like what we can and can't
and what we are and aren't.
Yeah, yeah, yep, exactly. And,and even now, you know, even now
our CEO will say I don't putany information about our clients
(20:46):
in there because even when yousay don't train on it, it's still,
you never know, slightlyirresponsible. Right?
Yeah.
But back then I think it wasreally rudimentary and you know,
where can we get sort of thesesmall wins.
Yeah.
And now it's their entiretools. You know our advertise, our
advertising team is lookinginto, into ways to automate some
(21:07):
of their check ins and thingslike that. We have our client success
team is generating thesecustom GPTs that can help them answer
any Questions about. We alsowork with industrial manufacturers.
So these really technicalspaces that you have to have specialists
to tell you what's up. Youknow, you can develop these, feed
(21:27):
information to these customGPTs and then run reps, speaking
with them and practicing withthem and then you learn too.
Okay.
We're talking too about, aboutcreating a custom GPT for training
our managers. You know, theseare our management philosophies gear.
We believe in radical candor.We, you know, we operate on, on eos
and so giving it all theinformation we can about us and then
(21:50):
saying, here are six differentscenarios that I want you to run.
Here's the grading rubric. Goand give, you know, a really good
specific piece of, of positivefeedback and then get your grade
back and do that six moretimes with six more different scenarios.
So it is exciting. And I willsay we had a strategic initiative,
I believe last year that wasmaking AI as necessary as having
(22:15):
an Internet connection. And Ithink we've done that. I think we're
there.
Wild. Okay. If I'm notcareful, we're going to keep diving
into that, but it might comeback up because you also said essentialism.
Right. Like that, that, youknow, has been a really important.
Right. And my, I don't know,amateurish understanding of essentialism
(22:35):
for me from, for me, from myperspective is even just pausing
for a minute and saying what'sthe most important thing I need to
get done today so that I don'tspin my wheels on lower value activity.
Right. Can I really focus onthe most important things to do?
(22:56):
So and it sounds like that waspart of the mandate right away for
you all was. And so what aresome of the things that. Right. Because
you said focus andessentialism. So what are some of
the things that you've had tobe really ruthless about? Right.
No, we're not going to spendour time on that. Right. I think
a lot of companies, a lot of,I know the conversation was in HR
(23:18):
all the time, which isruthlessly prioritizing. Right. And
I think one of the favoritethings I've seen about HR lately
has, and I've heard it beforehas been put the list of things you're
doing in HR and ask yourselfif we stop doing it with the employee
based notice.
Right. But that's a good one.
Maybe a bit, maybe a bit of anaside. I apologize. But talk to me
(23:39):
about like how you've, you'vebeen bringing. Because I would, it
makes sense to me howimportant that would be for the four
day work week. Right. Focusedand Sensualism. So how have you been
bringing that to life andkeeping a focus on that?
Yeah, good question. And it,it has to be done at the organization
level, at the department leveland at the individual level. And
(24:01):
so it's different for, for allof those, those different levels.
Organizationally at the aboutthat same time, we made a commitment
internally to really stickwith these two verticals that we've
made a bunch of progress in.So, you know, we don't need to take
on any client that knocks onour door. We're going to stick with
these two verticals becausewe're really good at them. Something
(24:24):
else Chris says all the timeis we want to be. We don't want to.
Basically, you don't want tobe known for what you're worst at.
So don't take on, you know, if.
We'Re not being mediocreacross a million things versus excellent
at.
Exactly, exactly. Socommitting to excellence in our verticals
was something we did at theorganizational level. Cool. I think
(24:44):
a lot of at the departmentlevel, specifically for me and hr.
And I think you nailed it withthe sign on the wall. Acknowledge
that every time you say yes tosomething, you're saying no to something
else. So weigh this yes thatyou're saying now against something
that's probably going to comealong here in a little bit. And is
that, are you comfortable withthat being a no? Because, you know,
(25:05):
they can't both be yeses andyou do them well with excellence.
Something else. This one, youknow, also I strive for all the time.
What is the minimum viableproduct for this? What's its simplest
version? You know what?Because also often that's the easiest
for people to use andimplement. So keep it simple, as
(25:27):
simple as you possibly can.
Okay. I feel like I might havesidetracked us for far too long and
I apologize for that becauseyou just said some things that really
popped for me. So you startedto roll it out. You did do this roll
roadshow and had to starthaving conversation around, you know,
focus, essentialism. How areyou using AI? I don't know where
that brings us to in thetimeline from 2023, but I'd love
(25:50):
to hear more of the. The journey.
Sure. And you know, I thinksomething that's interesting, people
might not be aware of thatthere are several different models
of the four day workweek thatdifferent folks roll out. So I can
tell you a little bit aboutthe one we chose and why and you
know, laying out expectationsand things like that, because that
was a huge part of gettingeverybody on Board is being sure
we're clear on expectationsand continuing to clarify those.
(26:13):
We just revised them againlast month. So we are on the 180,
100 model of the four day workweek, which means we do 100% of the
work impact and output, notnecessarily tasks and 80% of the
time for 100% of the pay. Sothis is not a consolidated, this,
(26:35):
you know, people always ask,is it 10, is it 10 fours? No, it's
not. We have reduced the timewe are spending on work, we've reduced
the time we're spending doingclient work on billable hours. And
so that's where it reallycomes in. You've got to be doing
the things that drive thelargest impact. We also decided instead
(26:55):
of doing staggered days off,we would do a universal day off.
So we do Fridays off. However,Friday is not a weekend day, it's
not a Saturday, it's not aSunday. So if you're going to be
completely out of pocket andunavailable, you still have to put
in your pto, which we haveunlimited pto. So it's also, it's
(27:19):
okay. It's more communicationat that point than it's communication.
It's the communication andbeing sure we have coverage in place.
So if you're going to be outof pocket completely, treat it like
a day off. Be sure you've gotcoverage. Communicate to everybody
in your pod and on your teamthat that's what's going on and this
is your coverage. Otherwise,if you're a client facing person,
you're expected to check youremail three times. Once in the morning,
(27:40):
once in the middle of the dayand once in the afternoon. And if
you're a project manager or ifyou're on the production side, you're
supposed to check slack threetimes a day. So the idea is if a
client comes in with somethingurgent, the client success manager
visits the urgency tree todetermine is this something that
needs to be done right now?And if it is, they send the slack
(28:01):
to the internal teams thatneed to know and it can be done by
the end of that day. So wehave that system in place for, for
capturing those, those urgenttasks. We just did a sort of follow
up survey. It's not, you know,I don't think that the urgent tasks
are coming in all that often.I think it's more about preparing
(28:23):
for the next week.
Yeah.
That people are wanting to do,you know.
Okay, so I have a couplequestions because I want to make
sure I understood the languagebecause I think I got a little lost
in the language on the 80, 100part. So tell me if I'm understanding
or not. So we didn't sayyou're now working 4 tens. You're
working for regular day iseights, you know, or whatever for
(28:46):
a sal, you know, whatever asalaried level person's expectations
would be. And if you're out,let us know. But otherwise we're
expecting some level ofpresence in order to handle urgent
things. Particularly my guessis customer needs on a Friday. So
let me pause there. Am I following?
(29:07):
That's correct, yes.
So then in my mind, if I canjust play it out as like, if I was
working that way, what wouldthat mean for me on a Friday? On
a Friday, that would mean forme I can mow my lawn. I can maybe
get instead of what theweekend can tend to be for adults
and even separate that out alittle bit for parents as well, which
(29:27):
is jamming everything youdidn't have time for in the week.
So plowing through, you know,laundry for one to five or six humans,
yard work, housework, youknow, other errands one needs to
run. Instead of jamming thatinto Saturday and Sunday, maybe Friday,
because I know I need to checkmy email a few times during the day.
(29:48):
I'm going to do some stuffaround the house that relieves some
pressure for my weekend. Mowthe lawn, do some laundry, you know,
maybe some house projectswhere I can still check my email.
Something urgent comes up,great. I'm going to drop and take
care of what needs to gettaken care of. But kind of making
it so that my. It's almosthelping you maximize the weekend
(30:12):
than say, quote, unquote, onlyworking for four days if I'm.
That's so productive. Okay,that's spot on.
That's really cool.
That's what it is for sure.And another thing, you know, something
that I certainly use it forand I think others do as well, is
it's deep work time. Right.So, you know, I get the kids.
(30:34):
No meetings allowed.
Yeah, no meetings and no. Andnobody slacks me for the most part.
Right. So. And you know, inhr, you got things coming at you
all day every. There's reallynot good deep work time in the work
day, Monday through Thursday.So, you know, this. These. These
projects that are veryimportant to me and that I want to
move forward that I used tohave to spend maybe Sunday night
(30:55):
or a weeknight on. I get thekids off to school, I get to go to
yoga, and then I come sit downfor two hours and lock in.
Yeah, yeah.
And there's something, youknow, there's like the pressure is,
is released. So your brain iseven more open for creative thinking.
So you, you hit, you hit itspot on. That's, that's what it is.
And it's really cool.
(31:15):
That's not at all what I wasexpecting to hear. Right. I was expecting
to hear like a 4 10, which Iknow you said there's other models
for it, which I don't think,you know, perhaps I'll have to have
you come back on for four daywork week number two day. But that
sounds really cool. It soundsreally cool and doable. But to your
(31:35):
point, if you're not going toextend to 4 tens, then now I can
see even with 4 tens, I cansee it, but I can see it even more
how important, you know,essentialism is. How do we reduce
low value time spent or lowvalue activity from being done well?
(31:57):
And you know, the human brainis not capable of focusing for 10
hours at a time, frankly, noteight either. Right. So the work
that you're going to.
Get, hardly for more than 60to 90 minutes at a time, but sure.
And also the work's going toexpand to fill the time that you
did it.
Yeah. All right, let me box usin a little bit because I'm trying
to just want to watch thetime. But I think you and I are going
(32:18):
to have to debrief and frameup conversation number two, which
I'm not going to make youpublicly agree to on the air. So
results I'd love to hearabout, you know, how are things going?
Yeah, great. So to tell youabout results, I think I need to
tell you about what we'vemeasured. So the metrics that we've
(32:40):
kept track of since thebeginning of this and that is time
spent on tasks and then lotsof lagging metrics. So our nps, our
nbs, and then all of our, ourrevenue goals and all of our revenue
metrics and then finally ourENPs, our employee satisfaction.
(33:00):
So I have data from basicallyevery three months for that first
year and a half.
Yeah.
And so for that first year anda half, productivity stayed the same.
Time spent on tasks, defre NPSstayed the same. NBS stayed the same.
We hit all of our revenuegoals and our ENPs surged. We were
(33:23):
at about 50 in July of 23 andwe got all the way up to like 85.
Yeah. So but you have to know,and we had talked about this going
in, that the novelty of that'sgoing to wear off, first of all.
Right. Second of all, it Takescontinuous upkeep. I mean we've had
(33:46):
20 folks join since then,since that time. So. And those folks
weren't here prior to the fourday work week. So really kind of
indoctrinating them into thisis how we're doing things now. Also
they usually, you know,haven't experienced this at other
places. So coming in andknowing, all right, it's, this is
(34:07):
a place where I really need tobuckle down and get my work done.
But I'll be rewarded for it ifI do that. So really every, you know,
the first 18 months,everything was incredible. Great
results.
One result, really quick.Okay, so you were just saying you
got some new data that you'relooking at?
Yes, yes. So we just got somenew data last quarter. And generally
(34:32):
speaking, this data says, youknow, I, Most people about 25% work
a little bit at least oneFriday a month. Another 22% work
at least a little bit twoFridays a month. And then another
22% say I choose to work someon Fridays because I use that flexibility
(34:55):
elsewhere in my week. So, youknow, especially folks with kids
in school where you're gonna,you're gonna want that uninterrupted
time, but you can also takeoff at 3 and go get your kids. So
it's that level of flexibilitythat we've introduced that I think
people have really come toappreciate and rely on. And, and
that's the value that they seein it. That and what I mentioned
(35:18):
earlier, which is that headsdown focus time where people aren't
pinging you and you don't haveany meeting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Soyeah, like you said, maybe I, kids,
school starts at eight so I'm,I'm not gonna be like online until,
(35:40):
or like, you know, my, my kidsmiddle school doesn't start until
9:30. Right. Doors open at 9.
Wow.
Right. So like I might beonline from 8 to 9 and then I'm going
to be off from 9 to 9:30ish,and I'm back on at 9, you know, so
maybe I'll flex. I mean that'shardly any time away, but you know,
(36:01):
I'll flex some of that time byworking a little bit on Friday. And
that's acceptable with theexception of. Right. And I'd imagine.
So here's a question for youis how, how much do you have to reinforce
and guard against schedulingmeetings on Friday? Because I'd imagine
it's so tempting.
Yes, it's a great question andit is tempting and it's something
(36:22):
we just reinforced. So we, wehad that survey last quarter and
really one of the biggestfindings was people aren't totally
clear on the expectations. Sowe revisited the expectations we
wrote at the beginning. Wetweaked them a little bit so that
they reflected how we actuallyare operating. We reiterated them
to the managers, we sent themout with the survey results. And
(36:42):
then I'm actually going tohave everybody sign a copy. They
don't know that yet. They'regoing to. Everybody's going to sign
a copy from our HRIs so thatthey acknowledge that they know what
the expectations are. Andthose are Friday meetings are a last
result, a last resort. Forexample, our client facing team can
do all they can to avoidclient meetings on Fridays, but sometimes
you just can't.
(37:02):
Right, right, right.
And so they'll take that, youknow, and then there are certain
weeks, for example, next weekwe have our biannual in person retreat.
So we fly everybody intoRichmond. It makes for a very short
working week as far as taskwork and client meetings and things
go. So occasionally on weekslike that, there might be a meeting
that pops up on a Friday. Butit should be an absolute last resort
(37:25):
and it can be very tempting.
It should be the exception andnot the correct.
Correct, correct.
So. Well, can I. Let me ask aquestion about that and then if you
can come back to it. Becausethe thing that. So I think over the
last couple of years,organizations have been pushing more
to get people back in offices.I know gear is primarily a distributed
(37:49):
and virtual. So I get that.But the parallel that's in my head
is especially as organizationsare, there was a big push this spring.
I think this was probably thebiggest push all at once. And I get
it. Some companies just builttheir office right before the pandemic
hit and or even, you know,gender mills where I worked, this
(38:10):
is not something they said.But I look at, they have a huge plot
of land, a lot of green grassthat they're watering and keeping
nice and paying groundskeepersfor. In a giant building that in
Minnesota you have to keeppipes from freezing. Right. So they're
probably, they're having toheat and cool this giant building.
Like I, I get from a nuts andbolts perspective that we've got
(38:34):
to get people into the office.Right. But what I've seen happen
and I'm gonna get, I'm gonnaget back to gear. I promise. We're
getting there. We're goingaround the cul de sac level. Right.
But part of why I think somany companies had to push for with
a million reasons, but a bigthing I've seen time and time again
is we have a really hard timemanaging by exception. And so therefore
(38:55):
we have to put blanket rulesin place and say everyone's coming
back this many days because somany companies tried to have policies
that didn't have teeth inthem. And what it comes down to,
and this is where I'm gettingto my question for you, which is
I would imagine the company'ssmall enough, so take this with a
grain of salt, but I'd imaginethis comes down to managers managing
(39:22):
their people and payingattention to performance and having
radically. Candid, as you weresaying, radical candor and having
conversations about, you know,perhaps not spending any time on
work on Fridays isn't workingfor you. How do we, you know, how
do we do that? Right. So Ithink that's the thing that popped
(39:43):
in my head is like, how muchare you needing to manage your managers,
frankly?
Right.
And hold them to the highexpectation of how they're managing
their people and holding themto these expectations. Thank you
for coming on that really longjourney with me.
It was fun. It was great.
Okay.
It was so good. No, that,that's a great point. And something
(40:06):
else I was going to say thatthat surfaced in that, in that survey
is that people want to beclear how much they value the autonomy
that they have. So I thinkwhat we're striving for and what
we try to train our managersto, to be on the lookout for is,
you know, it's, we, we stilltrack hours because we have to, to,
(40:30):
to be sure we're payingattention to utilization and capacity
and knowing when we need tohire someone. But really, you're
keeping tabs on the outputs.Right? It's, it's high autonomy,
high flexibility, high trust,and high expectations. So the outputs
need to be there. You need tobe asking about them. Expectations
(40:51):
don't change either. Right. Sojust because we're working one fewer
day in the week doesn't meanthat you're not expected to get this
internal project done that yousigned up for and are excited to
do now. We are perfectlyreasonable. And there are times when
the client work is rolling inat a pace that everybody's just really
(41:13):
trying to stay afloat. And atthose, yeah, put that internal project
on the back burner. But forthe most part, we expect everybody
to, you know, contribute notonly to their everyday work in those
client and those clientprojects, but also we're a really
fast growing digital marketingagency. And so it's everybody's job
to stay on the forefront ofwhat we can provide for our clients
(41:35):
to be sure they're gettingwhat they need, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, I'dimagine, especially with, with the
size. Right. And I think whatyou said, if I can put in, maybe
make sure I'm following is.And I knew this from when I was in
a consultancy, right. Like,profit's not a dirty word. It's what
keeps the lights on. It's whatpays everybody's paychecks. And so
(41:57):
perhaps that's part of theprioritization and essentialism is
like, is this in service of aclient project? Is this in service
of revenue generating work?And if not, that is probably something
to be weighing, you know, doesthat fall farther down the list of
priorities then?
(42:17):
Right. Yeah, if it's, if it'sfor fun, maybe that's a Friday thing,
you know, if it's notsomething that's gonna, that's gonna
drive results.
So, yeah, cool. Fun. There'sso many other questions I could dig
into, but what a really coolstory. So before I give us a violent
shove into the advice column,sounds like things are going great,
(42:41):
results are looking great andthere is no plan to adjust. But from
what I'm hearing is you needto keep an eye on what you're measuring,
you know, measure what getsmeasured, gets managed. Right. So
if you're not, you know, makesure you know what you're measuring
so that you can. It soundslike you've multiple times in the
(43:02):
last couple of years had tosort of reinforce what the expectations
are and, and even, or evenadjust the expectations because we
had to. Look, you know, you'vebeen learning, you've been learning
as you've. It's not likeyou've implemented this at four other
companies. Right. So you.
Right.
You know.
Right. And you know what, whatelse I'll say is that this is not,
(43:25):
this doesn't make us immune toevery other issue that companies
face. Right. Actually, I thinkJoe o' Connor said, maybe it's not
Joe, but I'll attribute it tohim anyway. He said the four day
work week doesn't solveproblems, it surfaces them. So when
we, you know, when that sortof efficiency is falling to the wayside,
(43:45):
when we have processes thatare far too complicated or when we're
getting outside of our, ourcore niche areas, it shows faster
because there's less time tobe working on that stuff. So we're
constantly working on that. Imean, we have planned at our retreat
next week to, to buckle downinto our pods and figure out what
can be discarded or changed tokeep us moving at this pace. And
(44:06):
so I'll also say, you know,transparently, our ENPs dipped at
the beginning of this year,but, you know, so did everyone else's.
You know, and, and that isnot, you know, our, our CEO will
tell you I do not rest on thatas an excuse. I'm constantly looking
for, okay, what can we bedoing better? What are our people
saying? How do we need toaddress that? So it, it's not a silver
(44:28):
bullet and it doesn't make youimmune to.
Yeah.
To all the other waves thatare crashing down.
Cool. Yeah, I, I, So the spacethat I primarily play in. Right.
Is executive coaching,leadership development. So I would
imagine you don't need to saya word when I say this, but I would
imagine. Right. Like peoplewho are excellent at leading and
(44:49):
people who are struggling atleading. To your point that you're
attributing to Joe o', Connor,it becomes very obvious. Right. With,
with how things are condensedand the need to really have sort
of be vigilant foressentialism, essentially. Yeah.
Yeah. There's less time tohide in.
Yeah. Wow. Okay. I always askeverybody to come with two pieces
(45:10):
of advice and a grab bag. Sothe first is, you know, what's your,
and it could be related tothis, it could be something else
that's just pulled your focustoo, which is, you know, what's one
piece of advice you have forany people, leaders who are listening
today?
You know, I don't know if thisis advice, but it is my personal
sort of people operationsphilosophy. And I stole it from,
(45:31):
I mean, I originally saw it inDanny Meyer's book Setting this Table.
I think it's also like a RitzCarlton sort of radical hospitality
theory, which is, is that ofthe virtuous cycle. And essentially
it's, if you're taking care ofyour people, they'll take care of
your business and, and takingcare of. And you're going to think
that this is funny to say onan episode about the four day work
(45:52):
week. Taking care of yourpeople doesn't mean throwing perks
at them. It means treatingthem like people, you know, not cogs.
It means giving them autonomyand trust and flexibility and the
ability to bring their wholefocused, concentrated selves to work
because you've given them timefor rest and time with their families
and time to catch up aroundthe house and things they need to
(46:15):
do. So. And I think, and alsojust this is not really related to
four day work week, butrespecting them as creators and as
relationship buildersthemselves. This part resonates with
me, the Ritz Carlton, it's, Ithink their mission is still we're
ladies and gentlemen servingladies and gentlemen. So treating
your people like the subjectmatter experts that they are and
(46:37):
they'll be more than willingto take care of your clients for
you.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So what'syour advice for those who support
leaders out there?
This is definitely not advicebecause this is something that I
just tell myself all the time.This is like something I'm working
on for myself this year. SoI'll just share it with you in case
it resonates for somebodyelse. But create systems and framework
(47:01):
that enable and empower yourmanagers to lead. So I have a habit
of over buffering and I have ahabit of being the bridge instead
of building the bridge. Butthat's not scalable and it doesn't
teach anybody anything. So youknow, for example, working on adjusting
(47:21):
our annual reviews this year,our 360 reviews and I want to make
them more frequent, I want tomake them simpler just to build that
radical candor muscle in our,in our people. And there was a lot
of concern at the leadershiplevel that this is going to be a
huge administrative burden. Idon't, it's not going to work well
(47:42):
if it's something that I'mjust taking on and reaching out to
people and nagging them andtapping them on the shoulder to do
it. So what it needs to becomeis part of managers KPIs and so their
managers need to be saying,hey, how'd your quarterly conversations
go this quarter? What's yourfeedback score on, you know, the
custom GPT that we built? Canyou show me a few of the examples?
(48:04):
So putting it back on peopleso that they're developing and they're
learning and they're figuringit out on their own and you're not
building yourself into these systems.
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I say about,you know, with leaders it kind of,
it resonates with just leaderscoaching. Right. Is, is, you know,
yeah, sure, you can roll upyour sleeves and just jump in there
(48:26):
and do it. But are you thenbuilding capability and are people
learning how to do it whenyou're not there? Right. I love that.
So and grab, what's, what'syour grab bag item for today?
Yeah, my grab bag is a veryfour day work week focus and it's
just don't be afraid toexplain experiment.
Yeah.
You know, I think we're afraidto play. Especially in hr. We're
(48:46):
afraid to play. We're nervous.But you know, I think our CEO is
a really good example of this.You know, initially he said, no way,
we're not doing that, and thenwas not afraid to say, all right,
let's give it a try and, andadjust accordingly. I mentioned earlier
about, you know, he's superexcited about AI, has been from the
very beginning and isn'tafraid to say, actually, you know
(49:08):
what, I do think there's abubble coming. And, you know, I do
think that we're saying somesort of reckless and dangerous things
about AI that just aren'ttrue. So I'm going to amend what
I said earlier. And itencourages other people to experiment
and it encourages people to,you know, not be afraid to try something
that might have them fall intheir face, but at least they tried.
Yeah, love that. Yeah, you gotto build in that risk tolerance.
(49:31):
So that such a catchphrase,perhaps, but the like fail forward
mentality of like.
Right.
We shouldn't be so dug in asto not adjust or do a 180 because
it's not working. Right.
Right. Yeah.
Awesome. Well, Morgan, thankyou so much for coming on today.
This was perhaps way too muchfun for me, and so hopefully you
(49:52):
enjoyed it as well. And Ithink our listeners and those who
are sort of four day work weekcurious will get a lot from this.
And so I just reallyappreciate you taking, taking the
time to come on the podcast today.
Thanks, Kent. I had a great time.
Yeah. All right, take care.
You too. Bye. Bye.
That brings us to the end ofour episode. Thanks for listening.
I'd encourage you to head onover to my website, Kent Coach, and
(50:14):
start a conversation with methere or check out my promotion playbook
at Kent Coach Playbook. Beforeyou go on with your day, I ask that
you please take a moment toleave a rating and a review wherever
you listen to podcasts. Fivestars. That helps put this podcast
in front of more eyes andears. Until next time, take it easy.
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