Digital Transformation & AI for Humans

The 4-Day Workweek in the Era of AI: Lessons in Innovation and Productivity

• Steen Rasmussen • Season 1 • Episode 53

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Discover how forward-thinking leaders are redefining productivity, work-life balance, and innovation in the AI era through the implementation of a 4-day workweek. I invite you to dive into the lessons in Innovation and Productivity shared by my amazing guest Steen Rasmussen from Copenhagen, Denmark. Steen is the guru of data & analytics, Director of Data Innovation, Thought Leader and Co-Founder at IIH Nordic, Board Member & International Keynote Speaker.

Steen is also Google Partner Academy Program Trainer and Speaker and CDOIQ Program Committee & Advisory Board member. The CDOIQ Nordic program is an extension of the original program from MIT, developed to advance the knowledge and accelerate the adoption of the role of Chief Data Officer (CDO) in all industries and countries.

In this episode, we explore the real-life journey behind adopting a shorter workweek and its powerful intersection with AI, leadership, and human-centric business strategy.

Key Discussion Points:
✔ What motivated the implementation of the 4-day workweek and how the idea originated
 ✔ Initial doubts and resistance faced when transitioning to a 4-day workweek
 ✔ Opportunities and unexpected benefits that emerged from the shift
 ✔ Challenges of maintaining a 4-day workweek amid rapid technological and AI advancements
 ✔ Solutions and strategies used to overcome those challenges
 ✔ Impact of the 4-day workweek on creativity, innovation, and team dynamics
 ✔ Specific ways AI tools have supported the success of the 4-day workweek
 ✔ Examples of how AI enhances productivity, efficiency, and decision-making
 ✔ Evolution of leadership approach to support the 4-day workweek model
 ✔ Strategies adopted to ensure productivity, accountability, and employee well-being
 ✔ Balancing data-driven processes with a human-centric and empathetic workplace culture
 ✔ The one essential quality leaders should develop to stay impactful and future-ready

If you're a leader, board member, or innovator looking to unlock new opportunities in the AI era, this conversation is your ultimate guide.

Connect with Steen Rasmussen on LinkedIn
Learn more about IIH Nordic: 
https://www.linkedin.com/company/iih-nordic/
https://iihnordic.com/


About the host, Emi Olausson Fourounjieva
With over 20 years in IT, digital transformation, business growth & leadership, Emi specializes in turning challenges into opportunities for business expansion and personal well-being.
Her contributions have shaped success stories across the corporations and individuals, from driving digital growth, managing resources and leading teams in big companies to empowering leaders to unlock their inner power and succeed in this era of transformation.

📚 Get your AI Leadership Compass: Unlocking Business Growth & Innovation 🧭 The Definitive Guide for Leaders & Business Owners to Adapt & Thrive in the Age of AI & Digital Transformation: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNBJ92RP

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation and AI for Humans with your host, emi. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation and, most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence and building resilient teams. Fostering emotional intelligence and building resilient teams. Today, we'll talk about the four-day work week in the era of artificial intelligence lessons in innovation and productivity. I am so happy to welcome Stine Rasmussen from Copenhagen, denmark. Stine is the guru of data and analytics, director of data innovation, thought leader and co-founder at IAH Nordic board member and international keynote speaker. Stine is also a Google Partner Academy program trainer and speaker at CDOIQ program committee and advisory board member. The CDOIQ Nordic program is an extension of the original program from MIT, developed to advance the knowledge and accelerate the adoption of the role of chief data officer in all industries and countries. Welcome, sting, it's so great to have you here today.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. I'm glad to be here, Even if the subject is a long-term coming right. It's a classic for me because it goes a lot above and beyond all the other data things that we could be discussing.

Speaker 1:

Exactly and, at the end of the day, it is about the business, growth and humans front and center, right? So we're just approaching it from a non-conventional perspective. Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies but our ways of thinking and leading. Are you ready to connect or collaborate? Check out the description for more details and don't forget to subscribe for upcoming episodes. And if you are looking to unlock business growth and innovation, grab your copy of my AI Leadership Compass on Amazon. This book is your definitive guide to adapting and thriving in the age of AI and digital transformation with could you please tell us a few words about yourself, about your life and why you chose to work with data analytics and technologies, and what is the main driver in your life? You have such a fantastic profile, so many achievements. I truly admire you, so please tell us more about yourself and your journey.

Speaker 2:

So I think it's always a classic in the sense that it's a fun journey to look back at and a lot of times along the way it was just happening to be at a place at a time. So I went to university and I studied corporate communication and I think that was a fine degree. And for a couple of years I worked as a journalist for the Danish defense and that was fine. And then I moved on to do PR for a chain of movie theaters in Copenhagen. So it's very much about communication. But in 1999, a friend of mine had started one of the first digital agencies in Copenhagen and I joined him as an online copywriter based on my skill of writing. But in those days you couldn't say online copy without saying usability. So I moved from online copy to being I think it was my finest title at that point I was the head of usability center of excellence. It just sounds beautiful. Right, it's a but. And then the reason why we were a center of excellence was because of all the eight offices that were there, we were the. I was the only one who had a student assistant. So me and the student assistant was the center of excellence. But that's fine, no detail.

Speaker 2:

My frustration was that, because I came from a commercial background, having studied corporate communication, the mentality that you have in usability, where you're the ambassador for the customer, that was a really big problem because I felt that somehow the company was being cheated. So because if you have an ambassador for the users, why don't you have an ambassador for the company? So, going in and kind of building on that, we started looking at saying okay, but why bother at all for a company to have a website? So how do you measure the business value of digital activities? That was actually one of the first things that we started looking into and the challenge around that and that from going from measuring the business value, it was really interesting coming from companies and starting having looked at their data and talked about the why of their website and saying, okay, you have this website with this objective. Based on that, it's worth 3 million euros.

Speaker 2:

But what happened was that we really often got the counter question saying, oh, that's fine, but what do I need to change to make it worth more? And that was kind of my growth approach into commercial data thinking and having this angle into the market about saying, okay, what can we do with data, what is the value of data and how can we measure the business value and how can we use data to optimize and leverage that. So that was kind of the driver and it's still a large part of the driver at IH being able to going in and saying, okay, there's probably more creative agencies than us, but hopefully there's not a lot of agencies where the more commercial focus on the return on analytics and the return on data. That has been a massive driver for us in having that approach.

Speaker 1:

I absolutely love it. What an impressive story and journey, Stine. What motivated you to implement the four-day work week and how did the idea come about?

Speaker 2:

It's kind of a double thing, right, because we were in a situation where, because we were a specialist agency, we could see a lot of our people were being headhunted by other agencies and we wanted to offer them something unique and at the same time, we had the first female employees coming back from maternity leave and before they had gone on maternity leave, they might have been working like everybody else, coming in early and leaving a little later, but after they had been on maternity leave they would come in just in time and they would leave just in time, but they would be just as productive as everybody else. So for us, that was kind of one of the inspirations to look internally, saying, okay, we talk about data to everybody. We're out at this point where the inspirations to look internally, saying, okay, we talk about data to everybody. We're out at this point where we started the conversation internally in 2014. It was the big days of talking digital transformation in the early stages and we were like saying, okay, cool, but we can see, based on our own observations, that there's actually a potential of working more efficiently and there's also the platforms and the thinking, and the customers were a little waiting to say, yeah, sure, we want to do digital transformation. We just want to see somebody else do it first. So for us, we look to say, okay, so why don't we do it ourselves? We have our data and we know how to measure it and we know the outcomes that we're looking for.

Speaker 2:

So we actually that drove us to start the project on the four-day workweek, and the ambition was to saying, okay, with the tools and technology available in 2014, we were convinced that we could go from five-day workweek to a four-day workweek without suffering commercially, simply by working smarter and not harder, and I think so. So we went in and we started a three-year change management process where we explored hundreds of different things. But what we did? We had the employees with us from the beginning, because the project was launched as saying it's a classic thing, amy, right, because if you go to nine out of 10 people in an organization and say, hey, if I tell you that I want you to produce 20% more with the time you already had, most people say you're insane.

Speaker 2:

Right, that cannot be done, and actually it would be. Yeah, I want you to work 25% harder Monday to Thursday, and people will be like, yeah, okay, that's not realistic, you drop that and they'll say, well, if you do that, I will give you Friday off. And then people were like, oh well, okay, let's look at it Right. So, because there was a very clear what's in it for you, that we were sharing the gains of this with the employees, and they were very motivated in joining us in this process and being part of this really insane change management process where we were what 40 people changing the culture of the organization to being able to deliver in four days, what we were five days about delivering before. But it worked and you can say, the original plan was that we were supposed to go live with it in 2018. But we actually went to a full four-day work week in 2017 and has been there since, so so Amazing.

Speaker 1:

Now it is a proven concept for a company. This is very exciting, and what's a need for you? That's the main question in order to motivate somebody so Stine. When implementing this concept of the four-day workweek, what initial doubts did you face and what opportunities have emerged? What challenges have you faced in maintaining this four-day workweek in an era dominated by rapid technological advancements, and how did you overcome them?

Speaker 2:

technological advancements and how did you overcome them? Yeah, well, one of the big things was that when we started, we started using a tool called OfficeRide where you measure the mood at the office on a weekly basis, so kind of an employee satisfaction tool that measures 32 different dimensions of what is the mood in the workforce right now. And that was kind of our anchor from the beginning and it's the anchor that we still use to make sure that we are on track. So they will help us saying okay, people feel like they need more recognition or they feel they need to feel more healthy or they're feeling too stressed by getting an employee NPS score. So it gave us a really strong compass to be data-driven in this.

Speaker 2:

And I think the concern of course from the beginning was saying is this even possible? It sounds like a crazy man's plan, but I think it's because we didn't have external ownership. So it's kind of easier doing stupid things with your own business taking, being willing to run some risk and doing something where there's no clear commercial short-term upside right. Because whenever we've been talking to the hardcore commercial people, they've been saying like so why the hell didn't you just do five days at 20% more? And that would have made the business even more amazing and you would have been rich.

Speaker 2:

But it wasn't the idea, because the idea when we started the IAH was really trying to say, okay, we want this to make this the world's best place to work. So that was kind of the underlying anchor in relations to the organization. We had both come from another organization that had not had a really amazing culture, so trying to go in from the beginning and build an amazing culture around being happy at work and actually having work-life balance as a central theme in relation to what we're doing. So one of the early initiatives before 4-Day Workweek, we actually did an initiative where the employees we hired an extra person and that person's job was to go around while people were at work in their homes and clean their apartments. Because they were saying, okay, cool, what could make you more productive at work in Wales? When you were home you could actually really relax. So trying stuff like that, but actually with an employee satisfaction in mind, saying if the employees do not have to spend their weekends doing spring cleaning and crazy stuff, then they would be better and more inspired at work.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. That's really impressive. And how has this shorter work week influenced creativity and innovation within your business and among your employees?

Speaker 2:

So one of the things people ask is saying okay, but that means that there's no fun, that people are not playing ping pong and they're not doing all this stuff that people normally would be doing on the last day, right, and I think from that perspective, people are maybe not playing as much ping pong and our Friday bar is a Thursday bar. But in a lot of sense, we've been really able to recalibrate around maintaining normal office life. We just basically changed the hour to be 45 minutes. So the productivity you deliver, the stuff you deliver in 45 minutes you would normally be an hour about delivering. I think it's inspired people to be more creative because they have a larger degree of freedom. Because when we looked in the beginning, we said there were so many interesting tools in 2014 that by utilizing these tools, we could actually do things faster. That was kind of the core mentality, saying that by toolifying and changing our way of working, we would be able to deliver the same thing in a faster way.

Speaker 2:

But the benefit of these tools is that they also established kind of a framework for people around how they work. So they have this kind of saying because you have a more structured workday, then you also when you're not working, you will have more energy and more room to be free. You're not working, you will have more quantity and more room to be freed. So a very basic thing saying okay, the stuff that needs thinking is stuff you're supposed to do before 12. Right, because your brain is working best until 12, so you should ideally do that type of work before 12, and then have meetings and other stuff after 12. When your brain is not necessarily running on full capacity, you shouldn't check your emails early either, because that will be sucking energy out of your brain. So be creative first and then do your chores as the balance Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. I absolutely love it because you already shared so many time management recommendations and those beautiful reminders about how you can optimize your work-life space and introduce more efficiency, so your way of working and living is really admirable. In what ways have artificial intelligence tools supported the success of your four-day work week, and can you share examples of how they enhance your productivity on top of all those recommendations? They enhance your productivity On top of all those recommendations around how you can work in a smarter way. How do you use technology to double down?

Speaker 2:

It is different kinds of technology. So one of the things, so part of it, is process, and then it can be really traditional things, like in all our meetings. We have time timers, which is like egg timers, but because you then, if you have a meeting, you set it for 10 minutes before the meeting is supposed to end. When the meeting ends, then you agree on what action points were actually there. So this is a very formal thing. We change the like I said, we change the hours to be 45 minutes, and so standard meetings are either 20 minutes or 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes or an hour. But technology wise it's it's going in and then actually using stuff like meeting notes. So having an AI record and do the meeting notes instead of somebody having to do minutes and follow up on that, then automatically the meetings get recorded and transcribed and activated. That way around Lazy man solution. But sometimes when we do meetings, we have a tendency to forget half of the things we talked about and half of the things that we promised to do. So that deliverability in relation to the meetings is just amazing right. So that's one way around it. The other way it might sound a bit trivial, but one of the things we found was that the main reason why you weren't being as productive as you could during your workday has been because you get disturbed by other people. So you're sitting and you're starting doing something and then somebody comes and asks you a question and that pulls you out of the focus you were in. So we're working a lot in these 25 minutes.

Speaker 2:

Pomodoro sprints and people know that if somebody else is doing a Pomodoro, they're not allowed to disturb them while they're doing it. So we have red lights on everybody's seats. So if you're in a Pomodoro, there's a red light that says you cannot be disturbed. We also have a Pomodoro. There's a red light that says you cannot be disturbed. We also have a Pomodoro board, so I don't necessarily have to go and look at you to see if your light is red or green. We can actually just go by going in on this board seeing that, okay, he is doing a Pomodoro right now and she will be available in 17 minutes. Okay, so I can start doing something else and then I can can go and disturb you when I'm not disturbing you.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic, that is really brilliant, yeah, so giving people this chance to actually go deep in work and respecting the time they have.

Speaker 2:

It's not necessarily something that a lot of these things also started pre-AI, so a lot of it is massively handheld, and one of the things that we see now, by adding much more AI in relations to the next generation of the tools, in relations to recording meetings, using AI for coding, using AI for making first drafts of texts and content to get that idea or to do summaries and stuff that's really that has changed a lot of things in the organization, and we actually have like.

Speaker 2:

One of the big themes, though, is how much can we IAFI further? So by using, because there's so much movement in the technology. So what we actually have is and this is so we had the four-day work week, and that was super, but people actually said, well, they needed more time to do personal development and internal development. So we use a Friday a month now to do what is called Learning and Innovation Fridays, and a large part of that is actually changing how people work, bill, so introducing them to new tools, sharing insights, coming up with cases. So it's 100% not client-related, it's way of working and it's toolification and helping each other become better.

Speaker 1:

I've been thinking as well. It reduces the stress levels drastically because everything is structured, everything is under control and everybody knows how the process looks like and what they're supposed to do, when they're supposed to do it on, spreading yourself across several processes and people at the same time is applied in a different, much better way, much more efficient way, and it is so smart really impressive.

Speaker 2:

And I think it was like we talked about in the last session. Right, it was a change management process and I think we tested like I don't know 200 or 300 different things and ended up accepting 80 or something. But going in and actually trying out all the things that you read about in the books, does it make sense to do like this? Well, maybe for somebody else, but it didn't. We even ended up inventing some things ourselves. So we have one of the things we have is breaking down the silos. So if people are working more focused, how can we also give them room to meet their colleagues? So we maybe not radically, but we invented something we call Lucky Lunch. So for the people who want to because we don't want to force the introverts into it if they don't feel like it, but we made a lucky lunch.

Speaker 2:

So you sign up and then randomly across the organization, you get told well, this month or this week because it was on a weekly basis you are having lunch with Steve, and next week you're having lunch with somebody else. So then you together find out when you're having lunch, so you get a chance to kind of have conversations. And it's been an amazingly talking about creative part. Right, it's been an amazing way to say okay, so what is it that you precisely do? Because, yeah sure, I've seen you at the office all the time, but you're kind of sitting in the corner where I don't come and I don't really know what you're doing. So, oh well, that's what you're doing. Well, that actually could be interesting, because I'm doing this for a customer. That actually ties into that. So simply by enabling people to have conversations across the structure has opened up for a lot of creativity and energy I love this.

Speaker 1:

It reminds me of the lunch club concept and it is really impactful, and you get more connected with each other as well, and when you feel good, collaboration becomes so much more efficient. Yeah, so it is really impressive, and I'm sure that our listeners and viewers are going to apply at least some of those golden nuggets to their working processes.

Speaker 2:

I'm more than welcome and I think, yeah, we still share a lot. So follow us on LinkedIn. Sneak around us. We do share a lot.

Speaker 1:

How has your leadership approach evolved to support this controversial concept?

Speaker 2:

So I think there is a higher need for trust. So if you have less time, then everybody needs to be more self-dependent, right? So my leadership style has been fewer meetings, more personal connections and then, on a practical level I think, being focused on the big picture. So we're trying to move away from micromanagement to the extent that is possible, because of trust being such an integral part of this heart of this saying. If people are supposed to deliver this faster and better, then we also need to look at the outcome and not just where they're spending their time, right?

Speaker 1:

Exactly. I totally agree, Stine. How do you balance the efficiency of AI and data-driven processes with maintaining a human-centric and empathetic workplace culture? Where is that golden needle in your case?

Speaker 2:

It's really about saying that without the people, there is no business. So it's a people-first approach, saying any change and we see that as, looking back at the entire process around the four-day workweek. All the processes have been driven by people people and it's the same with AI. So we need to have people drive the changes, because if people are not motivated in the change, we cannot force them to do something that is not coming naturally right. So we need to enable them to use AI and show them the value of using AI, giving them the trust that this is not us training them to use AI so we can replace them with AI, because that's not the case.

Speaker 2:

So giving them the feeling of worth in the organization and the ability to add value and I think the interesting part, if we look over the longer line, saying that compared have probably not grown as much on the employee side, but our turnover has still grown significantly more than what has happened on the employee side. So we've just been able to continuously work more and more efficient. Because I think what we didn't see was that, even though it was one change project, it was such a one change project, it was such a big change project, so it basically changed the mindset of a lot of the employees to being change-oriented or change-adaptive, right. So it gave them the will or the motivation to have like a change-by-nature focus. So the initiative now comes from a lot of places. It's not top-driven, it's driven from everywhere in the organization to be able to deliver smarter and not harder.

Speaker 1:

That's very wise and I see that mindset and emotional intelligence are valued really high in your business.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 1:

And that's how it should be. I am enjoying this conversation so much. I would like to ask you the last question what is one quality leaders should develop to become more impactful and successful in the future?

Speaker 2:

It's a tricky question, but I think it's. For me, it's trust, saying that we, by trusting our people, we enable them to be free and it frees our time to be able to think forward. Right, but there is. So you have this balance in a lot of cases between leadership and management. But leadership requires trust and management requires control. Finding that balance and actually working on trusting people to deliver everything they can is it's such a freeing step in relations to get away from micromanagement and control.

Speaker 1:

This is amazing. I absolutely love it and it's such a great message to wrap up this fantastic interview. Thank you so much for being here today, stine, and I really appreciate you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you and thanks for having me, Amy.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us on Digital Transformation and AI for Humans. I am Amy and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature how we think, feel and connect with others. It is about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing a winning mindset and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections and leading with heart.

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