The Friday Ritual Behind a Multibillion Dollar Culture

(Yes, it involves a chili pepper emoji.)

It was a Friday afternoon, and Erin Ozolins was debating whether to share a deep personal desire with every one of her coworkers.

She’d already filled in the required part of her weekly update, the section where she named her top work priority and what she’d accomplished that week. That part was easy. But below it sat an optional field, a blank space where she could share something personal with the entire company. Hundreds of colleagues would see whatever she wrote. She could skip it entirely. Most weeks, that would have been the safer choice.

Erin was a Customer Champion on Zapier’s support team. She didn’t have a computer science degree. But something had been pulling her toward the engineering side of the business for a while now, a curiosity she couldn’t shake and couldn’t quite justify. So in that blank space, she typed: “I want to be a developer, but I find myself afraid to say that out loud.”

She hit publish. The whole company could read it.

Her coworkers responded with encouragement. Erin eventually grew into a Product Operations Manager at the company, a role much closer to the technical side of the product she’d been drawn to all along. (Side note: she also plays the French horn on Broadway. How cool is that?)

I came across Erin’s story while researching my upcoming book Co-Flow. The more I learned about Zapier, the more I wanted to understand what made a moment like that possible. Turns out, they were highly intentional about building the conditions for it.

There’s a good chance you’ve used or at least heard of Zapier. The workflow automation company grew from a side project by three friends in Missouri into a multibillion dollar business. They’ve never had an office. The team spans hundreds of employees across dozens of countries. So when CEO Wade Foster wanted to build a culture where people actually trust each other, he couldn’t rely on hallway conversations or happy hours. He had to design it from scratch.

The centerpiece is a Friday ritual. Every week, every employee, from Foster to the newest hire, posts an update to the company’s internal blog. The required section names a single priority: the most important thing you accomplished this week and the most important thing coming next week. These updates feed into a company-wide channel, so a support specialist can see what engineering is building and a marketer can spot redundant work before it starts.

Then there’s the optional section, called “Unplugged,” where employees can share what’s happening in their lives outside of work, or surface ideas and questions they’ve been sitting with. That’s where Erin wrote about wanting to be a developer. It’s also where another employee wrote openly about struggling to set boundaries in his first six months of remote work, and where a team leader reflected on what it means to show up for your colleagues on the days you’re barely holding it together.

At Zapier, when a post resonates, teammates hit it with a chili pepper emoji that pushes it to a company-wide highlights feed. Vulnerability gets seen and rewarded, but no one is forced into it.

Foster describes these as “little rituals to get to know your team at a deeper level.” In Co-Flow, I explore why those little rituals are so powerful. One of the five forces behind creative collaboration is what I call Risk Permission, which is the belief within a group that people can explore unproven possibilities, voice dissent, challenge assumptions, and propose bold ideas without fear of humiliation, punishment, or reputational damage.

Zapier’s Friday Updates are one of the clearest examples I’ve found of a company building Risk Permission into the actual rhythm of the workweek.

Risk Permission doesn’t require a massive culture overhaul. It gets built one small chili pepper emoji at a time.