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Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson offer a strategy for creating the ideal company culture –– what they call “the calm company.” Their approach for better productivity is not more hours but rather less waste and fewer things that induce distraction and persistent stress. “Calm” has been the cornerstone of their company’s culture since Basecamp began 20 years ago. It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work shows what they’ve done, and how any manager or executive can do it too.

From Crazy to Calm

Fried and Hansson argue that the amount of work to be done each day hasn’t really changed. What has almost disappeared is the uninterrupted, dedicated time to do that work. In its place are unproductive meetings, never-ending email conversations, and endless interruptions, either in-person or in constant Instant Messenger (IM) requests.

The authors have been practicing what they preach for the last two decades at their Silicon Valley based software company Basecamp. They advocate calm over crazy on one founding premise: “The answer isn’t more hours, it’s less bull@*it.”

One example is a company-wide aversion to those unproductive meetings. Instead, employees are asked to provide daily or weekly updates on their activities for others to read when they have the time available. Not only are the meeting hours reclaimed, but the time spent preparing for and documenting after those meetings is also saved. This time quickly adds-up to blocks of uninterrupted time for immersion into key projects.

Defend Your Time

By restricting the work week to 40 hours (32 in the summer), the authors remove the potential for flexible or extendable deadlines that inevitably allow 40 to become 60, 70, or even 80, with a few crisis-driven all-nighters thrown in for good measure.

They admit to not being perfect in their adherence to the eight-hour day, but the stronger cultural message is that what doesn’t get done by Friday at 5pm will still be there on Monday at 9am. Sticking to that philosophy prevents you from promising ridiculous turnaround times to land a competitive deal (and stressing your people out in the process).

The authors firmly believe that a well-rested team working in a low-stress environment will produce better-quality work than a frazzled team killing themselves to meet an artificial deadline, only to go back and fix mistakes for a very unhappy client later.

This commitment to calm over crazy has also transformed the overall strategic direction of Basecamp. Rather than reminiscing over the “good old days” when they only had a few products (before the traditional pursuit of growth at any cost), the authors made the highly radical decision to cut back on their product line and simplify at the peak of their growth cycle. After all, “cutting back when times are great is the luxury of a calm, profitable, and independent company.”