Nonprofit Build Up® Podcast

Today’s Non Profit Build Up podcast episode is a conversation with the one and the only Nic Campbell, our incredible Founder, CEO, and Managing Attorney. In today’s episode, we discuss all things 4 Day Work Week (4DWW). 

From October 2023-January 2024, Build Up has been piloting a 4DWW. In this 2 part episode, Nic and Stef discuss how the 4DWW is just one component of the Build Up’s identity as a learning organization to create opportunities for learning and development for each team member as well as within the Build Up framework. Further, they discuss how the 4DWW also underscores the importance of a people-centered infrastructure within Build Up that recognizes rest and a rejuvenated team as critical infrastructure components.

We hope that this conversation invites you to consider how can you position yourself for success in transitioning to your version of a 4DWW. 

You don’t want to miss this episode. 🎧 

Listen to Part One:

Listen to Part Two:

A. Nicole Campbell, Founder, CEO, and Managing Attorney of The Build Up Companies

A. Nicole Campbell has over a decade of legal and operational experience in the social sector and has worked in private practice, private philanthropy, and the public sector. Nic is passionate about using her legal training, operations and strategy expertise, and knowledge of nonprofit law to think creatively to transform the way organizations work and learn from their work.

For over a decade, Nic has been trusted to lead brave infrastructure design for philanthropies with grant-making budgets in excess of $100 million.

“My clients trust me because I have the years of experience to have seen the solutions to the problems they are facing.”

Continue on for an even more in-depth look at Nicole.

Transcript for Part 1:

[INTRO]

[00:00:08] NIC CAMPBELL: You’re listening to the Nonprofit Build Up podcast, and I’m your host, Nic Campbell. I want to support movements that can interrupt cycles of injustice and inequity, and shift power towards vulnerable and marginalized communities. I’ve spent years working in and with nonprofits and philanthropies, and I know how important infrastructure is to outcomes. On this show, we’ll talk about how to build capacity to transform the way you and your organization work.

[00:00:39] STEF WONG: Hi, Build Up community. We’re so glad you’re tuning in. I’m Stef, Build Up’s Executive Portfolio Manager and host for today’s Nonprofit Build Up podcast episode as we sit in conversation with the one and only, Nic Campbell, our incredible founder, CEO, and managing attorney. 

In today’s episode, we discuss all things four-day workweek. From October 2023 to January 2024, Build Up has been piloting a four-day workweek. In part one of this two-part episode, Nic and I discuss how the four-day workweek is just one component of Build Up’s identity as a learning organization to create opportunities for learning and development for each team member, as well as within the Build Up framework. 

Further, we discuss how the four-day workweek also underscores the importance of a people-centered infrastructure within Build Up that recognizes rest and rejuvenized teams as a critical infrastructure component. We hope that this conversation invites you to consider how you can position yourself for success to transition to your version of a four-day workweek. 

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:41] STEF WONG: Hey, Nic. 

[00:01:42] NIC CAMPBELL: Hi, Stef. 

[00:01:43] STEF WONG: I am so excited to have the honor of doing what you typically do, which is interview folks. Yes. Welcome, everyone, to the Nonprofit Build Up podcast. I’m Stefanie Wong. I’m the Executive Portfolio Manager at Build Up Companies. I’m here with Nic Campbell, our founder and CEO. 

[00:02:00] NIC CAMPBELL: I’m very excited to be here and on the other side of the podcast desk, so to speak. I’m really looking forward to this conversation because I know we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, talking about it, and really engaging in it. So just to talk it through a bit more and share our experiences with others, it’s really exciting to be in this place. 

[00:02:21] STEF WONG: Completely agreed. Yes. Let’s talk all things four-day workweek. For those who are listening in, by now most of our community is aware that we’ve taken on the four-day workweek pilot, and it has been running smooth. But I think this conversation is really a chance to be able to shed some light into kind of the rationale, the thought process, the journey of how we got here, and maybe even shedding some light into what were some of those considerations as we really talked through moving from a four-and-a-half-day workweek to a four-day workweek. 

With that, I think it might be helpful to give a little bit of context for those who are listening who have less familiarity or exposure to what a four-day workweek actually is, as well as what the implications of having a four-day workweek might mean as compared to a traditional working week. Can you start us off there?

[00:03:15] NIC CAMPBELL: Yes, of course. I think it’s helpful to just think about what do we mean when we say a traditional business week. I’m thinking about a business week in the US. What we have seen over time is that it has started off as, I think, about six days a week, and then it was reduced down to about five days a week. The five-day, 40-hour business week is what we are typically used to when we talk about this “traditional business week.” 

The four-day workweek is this concept that you don’t work the five days, right? That 40-hour, five-day business week. Instead you work four days. The thinking is that it gives an additional day to your team to rejuvenate, to step into their own personal life in a way that they’re not able to with this traditional five-day business week. The four-day workweek doesn’t have to be a particular day. It doesn’t have to be you only work Tuesday through Friday or Monday through Thursday. It can be any day of the week. It could be some team members working a particular day and other team members not working that day. There is someone always on or in the office, so to speak, on the team. 

This thinking that once you go a four-day workweek, we hear a lot people saying, “Well, I could never or we could never do that. Our business model isn’t set up that way.” There’s not just one way to do it. Well, you have to work Monday through Thursday. That means that businesses that have to be open all the time, they are thinking, “Well, we can’t do it because what would happen the other days that the team is off?” Instead it could be some team members working Monday through Thursday, others working Tuesday through Friday, others working Wednesday through Saturday. Whatever the combination is that works. Essentially, you give people, at the core of it, the way I see it is, additional flexibility and space. 

[00:05:10] STEF WONG: I love that. I love that and I appreciate hearing kind of the customizable features of what a four-day workweek can look like to fit an organization’s needs. As we think about Build Up Companies in the month of February, which is likely when this is being published, although folks might listen to this at any other point, February 2024 is Build Up Companies’ fifth-year anniversary, so congratulations on that. 

As an employee, I’m pretty aware of everything that we’ve been working on and that we’ve accomplished to date. But what I’m curious to understand is prior to this four-day workweek pilot, we actually had a four-and-a-half-day workweek, right? On Fridays, we would work 9am Eastern to 2pm Eastern. We had the rest of the day to ourselves. But now that we’re working on having Fridays completely off, I’m curious to understand like what was the impetus for the change. 

[00:06:05] NIC CAMPBELL: Yes. I think calling out that we started way back in the day. We started with a typical five-day, 40-hour business week. Very quickly actually but over time, after we did our first summer Fridays, which is when we essentially – at that point, we were doing half days on Fridays, so which you just shared was essentially the hours in Fridays that we worked. We realized that once we did some shifting of our own priorities and talking with each other in terms of collaboration and capacity, we were actually getting the same amount of work done if not more. 

When the summer ended, we thought, well, why would we go back to this full 40-hour workweek when actually we were getting more done with less time and we felt better, right? We had more space. We had time to do things. We had time to breathe. We had time to read articles, just time to really step into fully who we are and then show up really refreshed and rejuvenated on that Monday. We said, “Well, let’s make it nine to two on Fridays.” So then we went to four and a half days for our workweek. 

I say even that transition was something where we talked about it, we used the data, and we shared our stories and said, “This is what it feels like, and this is what we’re thinking.” We said let’s try it. As we see within Build Up, we’ll try it. If it doesn’t work, we will course-correct, right? We are set up. Our model is set up in that way where at our core we are a learning organization. That applies to everything that we do. If we are putting in place systems or an infrastructure that is not serving us, then we’re going to learn from that, and we’re going to course-correct, right?

We put it in place. We implemented it. It was working perfectly so. When we went to the next summer Friday, where we were now in this four-and-a-half-day workweek, what then does your summer Friday look like? Well, now we’re thinking, “Well, let’s have the Friday off.” Now, typically you work half a day essentially on Fridays. In the summers, we’ll do the Fridays off. During the summers, we moved to four-day workweeks. 

Technically, we’ve been doing this for some years now. It’s just that we were doing it during the summer when I think more folks took vacation. I think people were more just interested in, “Oh, what are you doing on the Fridays?” Many organizations had summer Fridays. They were closing earlier, or they weren’t open at all. We were amongst good company I should say. We were not going against the grain in that way. 

When you look at how much of the year, the portion of the year that we did this, we did this for about a quarter of the year, right? We were already in tune with the adjustments that you have to make, the collaboration that has to happen, the capacity adjustments that come with it. When it came back right after Labor Day, US Labor Day is when we go back to our regular working schedule. 

The first year, it was like, “Oh, that felt really abrupt kind of going back into this, even though it was just half a day.” So we thought about what would it look like to just go on this four-day workweek? Again, in the summer, we were efficient. We got work done. We weren’t dropping balls. We really were functioning at a high level, and one of our core values is excellence. We were functioning at a very excellent level, and we thought, “Well, why wouldn’t we continue this?” 

But I think at that point, when the question came up, it was too soon, right? I say too soon in that we just did not have the team size to support that kind of transition because what that would have meant at that time was us transitioning from a four-and-a-half-day workweek to a four-day workweek with the same people, the same number of people, which then meant if there’s additional work and we were still bringing on new clients, all of that work would just fall on folks to do now within four days. 

We did need to grow to a size where we have the capacity to take on additional work and still have folks have space in their portfolio to both engage in the work at an excellent level and also learn. I do think at that time, it would have been premature. It would have been harder for the team to step into that four-day workweek in a sustainable way. 

Fast-forward to the next summer, we do it again. This summer, I think, and this would be this past summer of 2023, it just felt really good to be on that four-day workweek schedule. Our team had grown really significantly. We had a full team of folks that could engage in client work, engage in enterprise development, which is what we call our internal infrastructure-building work. It just felt like we had the right capacity. 

When we came off of that four-day workweek during the summer, question came up again. We discussed it internally and realized we are at this point that we could at least pilot this because we do have the capacity. We stepped into it, and we were really thoughtful about it and thought about when we could roll it out and talk about it with clients. How will we talk about it with partners? What would that mean for them and to really reassure them that nothing was changing and that this would actually enhance the way we work? 

It was definitely a process. We were very thoughtful about the timing of when we could do it and what impact it would have not only on our clients and partners and external folks that we’re working with, but definitely on the team and the team’s ability to sustain that kind of workload within that period of time, as well as engage in the kind of learning that we want our team members to engage in. 

[00:11:56] STEF WONG: Wow. That is truly fascinating, and I appreciate you taking us on the journey of understanding where it started versus where it is now. Definitely, it sounds like it was an evolution, and it sounds like it was a very gradual process, which I think is unique and appreciated in this way. So thank you for sharing that. Ultimately, it sounds like team size really mattered, the availability of the capacity of the team in order to make sure that the workflow and the pace with which things were getting done remained the same, regardless of that transition. 

When we think about this word productivity, and you had mentioned that, I think that that’s, of course, at the top of many leaders’ minds when they consider or even entertain the idea of what a four-day workweek might look like. It makes me think about the Great Resignation that has taken place in the last few years and kind of these conversations that are reexamining the way that we work from being in person to going fully remote because of the pandemic, of course. 

Then post-pandemic, looking at bringing folks back into the office or exploring what a hybrid model might look like or folks who have decided to remain fully remote. I think for some who are listening, the question might be when have we taken it “too far.” When is there too much autonomy being given to an employee, and how do we build that trust within that working relationship to believe that productivity isn’t going to be negatively impacted by being in a hybrid or fully remote working environment and then adding the layer of a four-day workweek? 

On the topic of productivity, can you talk a little bit about what do you anticipate being different or remaining the same when it comes to this pilot, as we consider really transitioning into a four-day work permanently?

[00:13:51] NIC CAMPBELL: Yes. I think the concept of productivity is a very interesting one because I think they’ve done a lot of studies where they talk about how productive folks are when they’re actually in the office and how many hours of the day they’re actually “working” and being what many would call unproductive. I think it’s about four hours of an 8 to 10-hour day. I think when you start from that place, I think we sort of step into this utopia of, well, when you’re in the office, you’re working eight out of eight hours, and everything is done on time. That’s not necessarily the case. Based on the studies, it’s saying that it’s definitely not the case. 

I think what you have to think about when you’re considering productivity and whether or not it will change or shift when you transition to this four-day workweek is how are you defining productivity, right? What does it mean to be productive within your organization? For us, it was – productivity is a few things. One, it’s are we achieving our goals that we have shared with each other, with our clients, with our partners? That’s across all entities. Are we meeting our project goals? What does that look like? What does that process look like? Is it effective? That’s part of it. 

The other is have we created a learning foundation for the team and learning opportunities for folks to step into? This is not just are they attending webinars and attending training sessions. But within the engagements themselves, is there space built in that not only can they work within that engagement and learn from doing but also space and time to ask questions, to follow up with the project leads, to learn from each other? What does that infrastructure look like, right? Being productive in that respect is have you been able to create an infrastructure and an environment that is conducive to learning in every matter, in every project, in every engagement? 

When we start to measure productivity, it’s not about just are you cranking out a deliverable. It’s about meeting those goals. It’s about that learning environment. For us, it’s also about two other things. One would be community building. One of core values is being relational. It’s very important that we are able to build a community within Build Up because we think that the way that we approach the work is very different. We have a unique way of looking at philanthropy in the nonprofit sector. When folks with that kind of thinking get together, I think it’s a very powerful thing. Are we able to build community within Build Up in a good way? 

Then the last I would say is just high-quality work, so the way that we are showing up. Yes, we’re meeting goals, but we are providing excellent work product, excellent deliverables and in a timely way. Those are the components of how we think about and what we put into productivity. When we think about that transition, those are the things that we are holding at our core. It’s also very aligned with our core values. 

For me, the question is less about how are you thinking about productivity when you transition to this four-day workweek. It’s more about do you think that you will be out of alignment with your core values, right? For me, that would be like, “Well, what are we doing so differently that is going to push us out of alignment with our core values that inform the way we work, the way we move with each other, with clients?” It would have to take a lot for us to say, “Okay. Now, we are just not moving in an excellent way. We are afraid to take risks at this point. We’re not engaging with each other, so there’s no relational aspect of it. We just don’t – we no longer care about learning,” right? Now, we’re just like, “Just crank out the deliverable. Get it done because we only have four days in which to do it.” 

What we have been doing throughout this pilot is looking at the team’s engagement with our core values from that perspective. So asking surveys, we hosted office hours where folks can drop in and just ask questions. We have done sharing of experience within larger team meetings, within our management meetings as well, and definitely at the senior leadership team meeting because we want to make sure that if questions are coming up with the leadership and the management within Build Up, that we’re able to address them as a group and also then share with the entire team, “These are the questions that are coming up for us. Are they coming up for you? Are you experiencing them? What do you think about how we can approach this in a good way?” 

We definitely have been thinking about it more in the sense of are we able to remain aligned with our core values and the way we work and then making sure that we’re tracking those things along the way. We sent out at least at this point two surveys throughout the pilot, and that pilot started at the end of October. It’s going through the end of this month. Already we sent out two surveys. We’re sending out another before it ends. We’ve really been engaged with the team as well to make sure that we’re hearing from them about how it’s been going. 

We’re also having conversations with our clients, right? Just to talk about like, “Okay, from internally, we’re hearing this information. How are you experiencing it?” Those conversations have been just really helpful, just really reaffirming as well about the way we’re working and thinking about approaching the work. 

[00:19:34] STEF WONG: Incredible. Yes. That’s so helpful to hear the way that you’re thinking about productivity in alignment with ultimately Build Up’s values. I think that this next question around how does work-life balance actually impact the bottom line or what is the value of work-life balance, it’s almost like you hit it in that being relational and having the space to engage with one another in a good way, being rejuvenated, and being motivated to want to learn something new each day really kind of gets at that. But is there anything else you wanted to add on that topic? 

[00:20:11] NIC CAMPBELL: I would say that the Build Up Companies, we have a people-centered infrastructure at the end of the day. The four-day workweek is just another way of centering our people. It’s not the only way that we do it. It’s just one of the ways, and we can point to others, right? We have a vacation tracker. One, I would say we have unlimited vacation, right? We take the approach that we are working with a team of professionals, and you take the time you need. You add value and you take the time that you need. Obviously, we still have a process to taking vacation, but it’s not like you are limited in terms of days because you should take the time you need. 

Another one of our tools for being people-centered is that not only do we say it because, again, studies have shown that when you have those unlimited vacation policies, people actually take less vacation than when you only have, let’s say, 15 days of vacation for the year. We wanted to make sure that people were actually taking their vacation. So every quarter, we have a vacation tracker where we go in, and we look at whether people have taken vacation time. At a certain point of the year, if we see that folks have not taken about one to two weeks, and we need to determine what that amount is now that we have the four-day workweek because we built that into the infrastructure now, that extra day. 

Prior to that, it was at least two weeks throughout the year. If we’re finding that towards the third quarter, someone’s taking one day, right? We will let their manager know where this person is in terms of their vacation time and that they should have a conversation about being encouraged to take time off because I do think when you take that time off, you come back rejuvenated. You come back refreshed. Sometimes, when you’re on vacation, you come up with ideas or a problem that’s been sticky for a while. You have that space and time to think about it, and you come back with just a different way of thinking and approaching that work. I think that it’s a great thing. 

This four-day workweek is just another tool at getting at that people-centered infrastructure. What we don’t want is that cycle that we see a lot. You talked about the Great Resignation that was happening, but it’s people saying, “I’m so burnt out. I’m so burnt out. I’ve got so much to do. I got to take a vacation.” They take the vacation. They probably work throughout the vacation, but they take the vacation. Let’s say they don’t work. Then they come back, and it’s okay for a little bit, and then they go back into burn. They’re like, “Oh, no, no. I’m burnt out. I need a vacation.” Then they go on and that cycle continues. 

That’s what we do not want. We do not want an infrastructure where when you are doing your regular work, your level is burnout, right? Your level is, “I can’t take a vacation because nothing can move without me.” I think unless you are at a very, very small organization, and we’ve definitely been that size, where you do have those considerations. I’m not saying that if you’re a five-person or less organization that you should necessarily be at that point because at Build Up from one person to the 16 folks that we have on the team now. 

I do understand there is a size of organization where that is a concern, and it’s less about do you have that infrastructure set up that way, as opposed to you are the size you are, and you have the volume of work that you do. But when you are at a certain size, definitely the size that we are and even when we were smaller, you should be able to take vacation and be in that moment and really soak it all up. When you come back into the work environment, it shouldn’t be stressful. You should be looking forward to it, you should be engaged in the work, and you should never be at a level where you are consistently at level burnout, right? There might be a day or a week where you have a lot to do. But if that is your constant, we need to look at the infrastructure, and we’re always being mindful of exactly that. 

That’s how we’re approaching it and thinking about this idea, this concept of work-life balance because at the end of the day, the people make the difference within an organization. If you are not centering your people, if your infrastructure, your systems, your processes, your policies do not center people, you’re going to be in that sort of constant burnout turnover cycle that I don’t think any organization wants to be in. 

[00:24:37] STEF WONG: That was a mic drop moment. Can I just say that I so enjoy working for Build Up Companies for that methodology right there, which is being people-centered? It really just changes the way that we experience our work and we experience our life and the ways that we show up. So thank you for sharing that. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:24:56] STEF WONG: Thanks so much for joining Nic and I on today’s episode of the Nonprofit Build Up podcast. Stay tuned for part two as we continue to discuss what we have learned during our four-day workweek pilot. We would love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode, so please feel free to add your questions and comments in the chat. For more information about how you can work with the Build Up Companies, please visit www.buildupcompanies.com. 

[OUTRO]

[00:25:24] NIC CAMPBELL: Thank you for listening to this episode of Nonprofit Build Up. To access the show notes, additional resources, and information on how you can work with us, please visit our website at buildupadvisory.com. We invite you to listen again next week, as we share another episode about scaling impact by building infrastructure and capacity in the nonprofit sector. Keep building bravely. 

[END]

Transcript for Part 2

[INTRO]

[00:00:08] NIC CAMPBELL: You’re listening to the Nonprofit Build Up podcast, and I’m your host, Nic Campbell. I want to support movements that can interrupt cycles of injustice and inequity, and shift power towards vulnerable and marginalized communities. I’ve spent years working in and with nonprofits and philanthropies, and I know how important infrastructure is to outcomes. On this show, we’ll talk about how to build capacity to transform the way you and your organization work.

[00:00:38] STEF WONG: Hi, Build Up community. We’re so glad you’re tuning in. I’m Stef, Build Up’s Executive Portfolio Manager and host for today’s Nonprofit Build Up podcast episode as we sit in conversation with the one and only, Nic Campbell, our incredible founder, CEO, and managing attorney. 

In today’s episode, we continue to discuss all things four-day workweek. From October 2023 to January 2024, Build Up has been piloting a four-day workweek. In part two of a two-part episode, Nic and I continue to discuss how the four-day workweek is just one component of the Build Up’s identity as a learning organization to create opportunities for not only learning and development, but to ensure that each team member as well as within the Build Up framework understand how to be best supported through this transition. 

Further, we discuss how the four-day workweek also underscores the importance of a people-centered infrastructure within Build Up that recognizes rest and rejuvenized teams as critical infrastructure components. We hope that this conversation invites you to consider how you can position yourself for success to transition to your own version of a four-day workweek. You don’t want to miss this episode. 

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:52] STEF WONG: You had alluded earlier to the community kind of responding to the four-day workweek. Listeners want to know. 

[00:02:03] NIC CAMPBELL: I would say that it has been overwhelmingly positive, right? I would say that our community is comprised of folks who believe that we can transform life outcomes for historically marginalized communities, right? We can do that by strengthening the infrastructure and the way that nonprofits and philanthropies work. I think when you start from a place of transforming life outcomes and focusing on historically marginalized communities, it’s about how do you center justice in the way you work, and how do you move with fairness. How do you move with a community-centric approach? 

We’re still nervous when we were rolling this out because it’s not the norm for everyone to be on this four-day workweek. When you start to do something that’s really, really different, then – also, I would say within the Build Up Companies, we have Build Up, Inc., which is our nonprofit fiscal sponsor and capacity builder. We also have Build Up Advisory Group, which is our management advisory firm. We have the Campbell Law Firm, which is a social impact law firm but is a law firm. I think we can count at least – I can’t even count on one hand the law firms that have this four-day workweek, right? 

When we were thinking about our clients and rolling it out, we did have conversations about what would it feel like, what questions could come up, even though we were working with folks that move the way we do and think in terms of the vision that we have for the world. We thought about it. Again, one of our core values is to be brave. We thought that this was another way to center our people and to really push forward our people-centered infrastructure while also, again, being aligned with our core values and producing high-quality work, improving the partnership, the already good partnership that we have and the collaboration that we have within the team. 

We thought about putting together materials to answer questions that might come up which are reasonable like, “Well, wait a minute. If you’re losing a day or you’re going to this four-day workweek, what do we lose?” The answer really is you weren’t losing anything because by that point, we’d added people to the team, right? We have increased capacity. So engagements that had two people on it now have three. Or engagements that had one person on it now have two or three people on it so that we can make sure that the responsiveness remains. If you get three questions in at the same time, now you’ve got a team to respond to each of those questions, as opposed to one person taking on those three questions in less time. 

We wanted to be really clear about that, and we prepared communications about that. We had conversations about it as well. We gave some notice, which I think just to let folks know. We’re also moving from this four-and-a-half-day workweek to four. We also have our strategy weeks throughout the year where we’re doing that every quarter. For that week, we’re offline for client meetings and any sort of client communications around matters, unless they are urgent. Our clients in particular were already used to us being offline and then being very responsive when we’re back online. Or if they had an urgent question that came up, during that time we would be very responsive, and they knew how to reach us. 

That’s the other piece I would say about this as well is that even though we are doing this four-day workweek, if something comes up on that fifth day, we are responsive. We include in our out-of-office messages how to reach us. Everyone on the team has that, and that goes out on Fridays. It’s very clear. If you have a question you need an answer same day, it’s not as though we’re saying, “Well, it’s four-day workweek. Talk to us next week.” If it’s an urgent situation, folks have picked up the phone and texted us and can reach us right away. 

That goes for weekends as well, right? Even on this four-and-a-half-day workweek, if we received a question on a Saturday or someone reached out on a Saturday or over the weekend, we were still responsive. I think our clients were already used to the way we worked and the way we showed up according to our values. New clients were – they didn’t know. They were just starting and stepping into the way we worked. We’d already told them during our [inaudible 00:06:31] before they became clients about this four-day workweek. 

I would say just it’s been overwhelmingly positive, very reassuring that the work that we’re doing and the way we’re doing it is important. We actually had our clients write back to us and tell us, “This is amazing. We really appreciate you centering your people, and we want to learn what happens during your pilot. We are thinking about doing something similar. We’d love to have conversations.” That’s why we thought about, okay, let’s share our journey as we go and do podcasts, do articles, and have one-on-one meetings because people are very interested in flexibility and how can they provide that kind of flexibility to their teams. I think the four-day workweek is just another tool. 

I do want to call out. The four-day workweek is not the only tool. Let’s say you go to this four-day workweek, but you still don’t have a people-centered infrastructure, right? You’re still not centering your team. It’s not – they’re still going to be burnt out. Four days or five days, if you do not have an infrastructure that is supportive of the team that is doing the work, it’s not going to be, “Okay. Well, we’ve moved to a four-day workweek. Everything is fine.” I think it has to be part of an ecosystem around centering your people. I would say that it’s been great to get that kind of feedback. 

I think for folks outside of the Build Up community, we get some of those comments of like, “It must be nice. I wish I work at Build Up.” I’m like, “Well, you should check out our website because we are hiring.” But it’s really that moment of, “It must be nice,” and then like, “It is nice. It’s great, and here is how we do it.” I think just taking those moments to realize that it’s something new, it’s something different, and it’s something that folks just may not be seeing for them. 

I do think at that moment, what we’ve talked about internally is transforming that conversation into a moment of saying, “Why don’t we invite you to think about how you can do this for your team?” It doesn’t have to be, again, Monday through Thursday. It could be more flexible hours. There’s lots of permutations and ways to do it. But, essentially, think about how you can strengthen your people-centered infrastructure, right? How much more can you center the folks on your team? Yes, I would say it’s been really great. 

[00:08:56] STEF WONG: That’s awesome to hear that there’s been so much support and such a great response. I hope that those who are aware of our four-day workweek find this conversation to be more illuminating into the journey. 

As we wrap up our time together and kind of like thinking through what you shared, I think particularly for those who are both interested in exploring the idea of four-day workweek or are also in that space of just like not seeing how it would be possible for them, what are some of the questions they should start considering in order to set themselves up for success, right? I think part of the hesitancy for folks might be like, “Well, what happens if it doesn’t work? What happens if we do all of this, but then we’re less productive?” Or there’s some sort of surprise or some sort of new awareness about how four-day workweeks might not be the right fit. 

I know you mentioned that there are so many different ways to be more people-centered to provide space and flexibility for teams to feel more rejuvenated and not operate in this consistent burnout mode. I’ve been there. It’s not fun. Yes, if you could just close us out with what are some of those considerations that folks should start to ask themselves and be able to even learn from our journey to set themselves up for success. 

[00:10:16] NIC CAMPBELL: Yes. I think the way that we work, we spend a lot of our time strengthening the organizational infrastructure of brave nonprofits and philanthropies. We do spend a lot of our time in our thinking space in thinking of how to do it better, how to improve. We do it internally, and we are always trying to remember, both for ourselves and when we engage with clients, to sit in that space of here’s what’s working really, really well. Here’s where the strengths are within the work that you’re doing, the infrastructure that you built. Here is the impact. 

I would say that that kind of approach is what I would suggest taking here, which is rephrasing that question, reframing it from what happens if it doesn’t work to what happens if it does. What does it look like if it does work? What does your team look like? What do your deliverables look like? How do you improve the way you work? Write that script out first, right? Then I would love to see you then back away from that, right? How do you then create that vision and that sort of reality and then say, “Let me back away from that, and let me not even try to do it.” 

I think when you start to reframe it, it really puts the focus on what do you define as failure, right? You try it, and what does it mean that it doesn’t work? That, again, for us, it would mean we are completely out of alignment with our core values. If shifting to four days from four and a half days is what does it, I think I likely have a bigger infrastructure problem with my hands than the four-day workweek, right? The four-day workweek is just a tool that showed me what the issue was because it really has to be about how do you shift out of alignment with the way you work at your core and what you believe in as an organization, so your organizational values. 

For failure, it has to be at that point. What does that really mean? What can you learn from it? Again, to reframe that and think about what can you get out of that experience? How can you course-correct? Have you structured it in such a way that you can course-correct? For us, it’s a pilot. A pilot means you’re experimenting, and you’re trying something, and it may not work. If it doesn’t, you adjust. Does that mean if it doesn’t work, you’re like, “Well, it didn’t work, so let’s just go back to what we were doing before.”? I think that there’s a lot of in-between between the four-day workweek. Then let’s say you’re shifting back to what you were doing previously. 

At the core is how do you continue to center your people, and how do you encourage learning, and how do you continue to show up in a way that’s aligned with your organizational values? For me, it’s more about if it doesn’t achieve our goals that we talked about earlier, what do we need to adjust to get there. If it’s not looking like the way we had it during this pilot, what could that next iteration be to make sure that we’re getting to the goal? We experiment. 

Again, you have to make sure that at your core, you are holding those organizational values really front and center because you don’t – we talk about experimentation, but we’re not experimenting with the quality of the deliverables that we’re providing. We’re not experimenting with the level of professionalism that we bring to an engagement, right? We’re not experimenting with – we’re not community building in the way that we’d like.

Some things are non-negotiable. I think setting that very clear at the outset will be helpful because it also helps you define success. What does success mean to you if this pilot goes well? Does it just mean that, okay, we got everything in on time, right? If that’s your level of success, I think it’s not the pilot or the four-day workweek that’s showing you that. It’s how you move as an organization. That is – no matter what you say your core values are, your core values are coming through once you’re saying like, “These are the things that matter to us,” right?

For us, again, it is our core values. So we want to measure that, how we’re working against those values, how we’re showing up, check-ins as I mentioned, the surveys, all of the different tools that we’re using to check-in. I would say that there’s a lot between utter “failure.” Let’s just go back to the way we were working. I don’t think it’s that simple. I do think you need to ask yourself lots of questions, and there’s lots of learning there because, again, it’s not the four-day workweek that’s likely the problem. There’s a larger issue going on. 

For us, right now, I think we’re in a really good place. There are definitely some adjustments we want to make to how we’re approaching the four-day workweek. But there’s nothing glaring where we’re saying, “Oh, we can’t do the four-day workweek.” I know we’re going to have additional conversations around what that looks like as we go forward. But there are definitely learnings, even when it goes well, right, which is the beauty of being in experimentation mode and being brave enough to step into it and say it out loud, right, which is what we what we did. 

All that to say, I think at the core of it, I know we talked about the four-day workweek, and we wanted to have a conversation about how we approached it. But at our core, it’s about centering people, making sure you have a people-centered infrastructure and that you are moving in alignment with your core values. The four-day workweek is just another way of us doing that so that we can ensure that we remain a learning organization. 

[00:15:42] STEF WONG: Amazing. Thank you so much, Nic. This has really been so insightful and so exciting, I think, both as someone who is a member of the team and gets to benefit from being in this four-day workweek pilot but also to have the opportunity to have a conversation to inspire others, to give folks the same. Thank you so much for the time. 

We really want to invite our listeners to add comments and questions as soon as you hear this podcast. Let us know what you think. Let us know what questions are still coming up for you or what you’re curious to learn more about because as Nic mentioned, we are going to have kind of another checkpoint conversation to share the other set of learnings that will come out of this. Thanks, again, for the time, Nic, and thanks for our listeners for tuning in. 

[00:16:25] NIC CAMPBELL: Thanks so much, Stef. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:16:27] STEF WONG: Thanks so much for joining Nic and I on today’s episode of the Nonprofit Build Up podcast. We would love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode, so please feel free to add your questions and comments in the chat. For more information about how you can work with the Build Up Companies, please visit www.buildupcompanies.com. 

[OUTRO]

[00:16:50] NIC CAMPBELL: Thank you for listening to this episode of Nonprofit Build Up. To access the show notes, additional resources, and information on how you can work with us, please visit our website at buildupadvisory.com. We invite you to listen again next week, as we share another episode about scaling impact by building infrastructure and capacity in the nonprofit sector. Keep building bravely. 

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