Ambition is not the enemy of the four-day week

Two things are true at once in this company. We are committed to the team's wellbeing: the four-day week, the refusal to let anyone pile up extra hours, the flexibility we try to protect. And we are ambitious: we want to grow in quality, in clients, and yes, in profit.

Put more uncomfortably: we only succeed if we reach professional excellence and above-average margins, and we only succeed if we get there with a happy team. Achieving either one is hard. Fighting for both is heroic.

Most companies resolve the tension by quietly dropping one half. The wellbeing companies let the ambition go soft and call it culture; the ambitious ones let the wellbeing go and call it hustle. We think the tension is not a problem to solve but a structure to hold, and holding it asks specific things of everyone here:

• Nonconformity. One client, we want two. A project delivered in 120 days, the next one in 90. Settling is surrendering to the competition.
• Perfectionism. Mistakes should anger us and become fuel. Code, design, processes, the way we write: intentionally beautiful, inside and out.
• Pragmatism. Always right behind perfectionism. Choose battles, ship more in less time. The free Friday has a price, and this is it.
• Criticism. Frank with each other when something can be better. This is not about being nice to each other. It is about being good.
• Stubbornness. What moderns call resilience and what used to be called guts. Good years shouldn't distract us; bad ones shouldn't discourage us.
• Fixation. The week is 32 hours; the goal is permanent. Once you own a car you start seeing that model everywhere. Prime yourself to spot whatever makes us better, and share it.
• Initiative. Not just bringing new ideas. Doubting less, not waiting for someone else to fill the backlog, following what happens to the work after it leaves your hands.
• Learning. Absorb everything that can make us better, and not only the technical: order, thinking, beauty.
• Responsibility. The inner conviction that my maximum contribution is the minimum the group deserves.
• Hunger. The tickle in the gut that says we are not yet where we deserve to be, turned into effort instead of complaint.

I am determined to prove that a company can work differently: with respect, individual freedom, horizontal structure, profit sharing. For anyone out there to respect that, we also have to be excellent, fast, interesting. Better. The Friday off is not the reward for ambition. It is the bill.

First published in our internal knowledgebase in September 2024, addressed to the team. Adapted for the blog.