The four-day week is the answer to all 21st-century ‘ills’

The four-day week has long been seen by the business world as a union plot to cut profits and increase costs. Not so, says Andrew Barnes.

The Deal February book reviews

Book Reviews

THE 4-DAY WEEK
Andrew Barnes with Stephanie Jones
Hachette, $32.99

The 4-Day Week by Andrew Barnes

Andrew Barnes worked for the financial colossus which is Macquarie Bank — that is until he decided there were better ways to spend his waking hours. He gleefully reveals that, since he left a couple of decades ago, he employs a simple mantra when any workplace issue demands his response. “I silently ask, what would Macquarie have done,” he writes. “Then I do precisely the opposite.” No prizes for guessing then where Barnes sits in the debate about work-life balance and the pressing issues around intense work, long hours and pressures on family life.

His views are not especially new, although he is interesting on how excessive work intersects with consumerism to feed “a new economic model that is in turn steadily undermining the worker protections that have been won, piece by painstaking piece, since the First Industrial Revolution”. Barnes is talking about the new opiate of choice — convenience — and our willingness to support a gig workforce that lacks sick pay and annual leave. And look over here, at a five-day week that no longer suits a digital age.

The solution to both is a restructuring of work to free us up from long days that force us into the arms of Uber Eats and Airtasker. We need to cut our days, but not our salaries or our productivity, and reclaim that most precious commodity — our own time.

The four-day week has long been seen by the business world as a union plot to cut profits, increase costs and generally undermine a culture where work is privileged over just about everything else in society. N

ot so, says Barnes who has chops in this one: in 2018 he ran an eight-week trial of the four-day week in his New Zealand trust company, Perpetual Guardian, and since then has been promoting the idea to governments and companies around the world.

His book is something of a manual for those interested in experimenting with the working week — a how-to guide backed by academic research. Its claims are ambitious — for example, he suggests carbon emissions will be reduced when the mass commuting to work that is now required is reduced by 20 per cent.

Easier to accept is his belief that going to work four days, not five, will cut down on time wasted in the office and combat stress and anxiety.
Helen Trinca

-

THE PASSION ECONOMY: THE NEW RULES FOR THRIVING IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Adam Davidson
Hachette, $32.99

The Passion Economy by Adam Davidson

Adam Davidson is an economics journalist who writes regularly in the New Yorker and co-founded a wildly successful podcast called Planet Money. His latest work argues that there is still money to be made and satisfaction to be gained even as Western economies face disruption and job losses. The new “passion economy” is one built by people who prosper when they follow their passions and carve out their own careers beyond the big corporations whose success has depended on scale.

Davidson is an optimist who writes that while the “passion economy” has “new challenges, virtually everyone can have a richer life, in every sense of the world. Perhaps most radically of all, I believe that this better life is not all that hard to achieve”.

He has plenty of stories to illustrate his belief that an individual’s ambition and creativity can generate profit along with fulfilling his or her passion.

There’s the Jesuit turned chocolate bar manufacturer who refuses to follow the conventional wisdom of confectionery manufacturing and instead uses ingredients that are more expensive but less processed. The lesson? Distinguish your products from your competitors and pursue intimacy at scale.

Then there’s the legacy brush manufacturing company that, finding it hard to compete with cheap Chinese imports, shifts its production into niche brushes for gourmet bakers and the Mars Rover for its rock-gathering missions on the red planet. The finding? Don’t compete in a commodity market. And there’s the accountant who stops charging by the hour and instead imposes a high, single fee. The lesson is simple: price should drive costs. Decide how much money you want to make and work to provide that value.

These are all specific, helpful tips that will assist anyone trying to start or reinvent their business although Davidson does not address the bigger question of whether most people will be able to transform their fortunes simply by following their passions.

After all, for every person who leverages the internet to create a successful niche wine marketing business, there are surely 10 brick and mortar retailers who have shut their doors in the face of competition of online shopping.

For every brush or pencil manufacturer who has managed to escape the offshoring of production by becoming a boutique manufacturing firm, there are dozens who have collapsed along with tens of thousands of good middle-class jobs.

These serious consequences of the “passion economy” don’t gel with Davidson’s individualistic philosophy. The book is an entertaining read but does not tackle the fallout from the dramatic shifts in the modern economy thanks to technology.
Lachlan Moffet Gray

-

Using empathy to market

A still from the Yoplait ‘Mom on’ commercial of 2017

“A great example of successfully using empathy (in marketing to mothers) is the Yoplait ‘Mom on’ commercial from 2017, which tackles the issue of mothers feeling judged for their choices.

The Mother of All Opportunities by Katrina McCarter

Whether that choice be breastfeeding in public, going back to work, having a child later in life, wearing Lycra or using bribery to get their children to participate in chores around the house, Yoplait depicts the ongoing daily judgments mums feel they are up against. This commercial successfully positioned the Yoplait brand as having a deep understanding and empathy for the constant judgments mums feel, including the choice of what they choose to feed their child.”

From The Mother of All Opportunities: A strategy for a decade of growth, profits and market share gains, by Katrina McCarter (www.marketingtomums.com.au)

-

Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen was one of the giants of modern strategy and management ideas.

Clayton Christensen, who died in January at the age of 67, was one of the giants of modern strategy and management ideas. A professor at the Harvard Business School, he was renowned for his theories on “disruptive innovation” and their application well beyond business.

The Innovator’s Dilemma:
When new technologies cause great firms to fail
Harvard Business School Press, 1997

This classic of 20th century management looks at why even good companies lost their market dominance in the late 20th century and why they face a dilemma — innovate and risk alienating customers, or stick to what works and risk being overtaken.

-

Disrupting class:
How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns
(Co-authored with Michael Horn)
McGraw-Hill, 2008

A decade later Christensen applied his ideas about disruption to the US school system, arguing the case for more technology to fit education for the 21st century.

-

The Prosperity Paradox:
How innovation can lift nations out of poverty
Co-authored with Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon
Harper Business, 2019

The year before he died, Christensen worked with other authors to argue that innovation — not aid and resources — will rescue countries from poverty. The idea is to look to entrepreneurship and market-driven activity to build sustainable growth.