The Persuasion Playbook is designed to help you make the case for a trial to your bosses or board.

This page is one of hundreds of documents on this Notion workspace that participants in 4 Day Week Global’s trials and other programs can use when planning, trialing, and expanding their 4-day week. Other sections of this workspace contain case studies of companies; samples of work products, policies, templates, and other materials created by organizations to support their 4-day weeks; an extensive FAQ; and guidelines for facilitators and workshop organizers.

If you want to get in touch to learn more about my work, email or schedule a call.

Introduction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYudcVryEHU

So you want to implement a 4-day week at your company. If you’re not the CEO, chances are, you’ll need to make the case for a trial to your bosses or board.

This playbook is designed to help you do that. It draws on research from my book SHORTER: DESIGNING THE 4-DAY WEEK, work on the psychology of persuasion, and the dynamics of One Last Job movies, to outline a strategy you can use to make the case for a 4-day week in your organization.

The Possibility

The 4-day week is a genuinely global movement, that’s taken off in a wide variety of industries: creative, care, manufacturing, professional services, public sector. It includes companies ranging in size from 2 people to 2000+ who have shown that it’s possible to shorten working hours, without cutting salaries or sacrificing customer service or finances.

As a result, in the last couple years the debate around the 4-day week has shifted from “Is it possible?” and “Why should we try something so crazy?” to “How do we make it work here?”

The good news is, the media attention and examples of other companies’ success means that your challenge is less to convince your boss that it’s possible in theory to do a 4-day week, but to show that it’s worth trying in your company.

However, while data and case studies provide confidence, they aren’t necessarily enough to convince boards and bosses.

You need to also explain why the company should see the 4-day week as a benefit for everyone, and how they could get started.

The Data

There’s plenty of data and case studies, and first-hand accounts of companies successfully navigating a shift to 4-day weeks.

But you still need to answer an important question about your management or board: What data/evidence will they find convincing?

The answer is not self-evident.

People and organizations make decisions in very different ways: some are very data-driven, others like the nuance and complexity of stories; some have a risk appetite that lets them say yes when faced with uncertain evidence, while others are much more cautious and prefer saying no.

People who are best able to make the case to management first do two things successfully:

1. Anticipate what questions and objections management will raise about the 4-day week in general, and more specifically about the logistics of doing a trial. This means thinking about how a 4-day week would operate in your industry and business; what big problems it would solve; and how you’d deal with the potential issues it would create. It also means talking more specifically about how a trial would work, how you could design it to get the maximum amount of data with the minimum risk, and what you’d need to see to declare it a success.