What signs to look for if your company is moving toward 9-9-6?

Founders almost never declare that they want to run a 9-9-6 culture. On paper, they say they care about sustainability, family time, and building a company that will last. Yet when you look at calendars, late night messages, and weekend calls, you sometimes see a very different reality forming under the surface. A 9-9-6 culture usually does not arrive through a formal policy. It drifts in quietly through small compromises that become habits, then expectations, and finally the price of staying in the room.

One of the first signs is the way “just this sprint” slowly becomes the entire operating model. Occasional crunch periods are normal for any ambitious team. There are product launches, fundraising windows, and strategic clients who genuinely require extra effort. The problem starts when every month carries “one more critical push” and every quarter is treated as uniquely urgent. The team keeps hearing that after this launch, this deal, this fundraising round, things will calm down. They never do. Crunch overlaps with crunch, and there is no real baseline to return to. Instead of designing better systems, hiring ahead, and cutting scope, leaders rely on adrenaline and goodwill to cover the gap. That is how overwork stops being an exception and becomes the price of entry.

You also see the truth of a culture in what happens during evenings. Leaders may talk about flexibility and balance, but you can tell a lot by what happens between 7pm and 11pm. If the most important decisions, revisions, and approvals only move after dinner, it means the company has quietly accepted extended workdays as normal. People understand that if they log off at 6 or 7, they will miss context, delay projects, or risk being perceived as less committed. Sometimes founders justify this with time zones or packed daytime schedules. But when the main collaboration window has shifted into hours that should belong to rest, family, or spiritual life, the culture is teaching everyone to trade their evenings for the backlog. That is not a one off sacrifice, it is a pattern pointing toward 9-9-6.

Weekends often become the next frontier. In the beginning, weekend work looks voluntary and almost glamorous. A few high performers join a Saturday product review to “help the team move faster.” A Sunday investor deck session is framed as a working brunch. Leaders say, “Only if you are free, no pressure.” Then the tone changes. Standing Saturday check ins appear. Client deliverables are promised for Monday even though they clearly require work on Saturday or Sunday. In performance conversations, people who are “always available” and “willing to jump on a Sunday call” receive extra praise. Colleagues begin to reshuffle family gatherings, religious commitments, and rest days around unspoken company time. Laptops show up on short trips “just in case.” By the time the pattern is obvious, the team is already living something that looks very close to a six day work expectation, even if the HR handbook still claims a five day week.

Another subtle but powerful sign is the type of stories that are celebrated. In a culture drifting toward 9-9-6, hero worship replaces healthy modeling. The legends that get repeated sound like this: the founder who slept in the office for three nights, the engineer who rebuilt a feature overnight, the sales lead who closed a deal from a hospital waiting room. These stories do more than entertain. They set a standard. When the heroes you highlight are always the ones who sacrifice sleep, health, and relationships, everyone learns what is truly valued. At the same time, leaders often model the same behavior in real time, sending emails at 2am, cancelling holidays, and boasting about how long it has been since they took a proper break. Without saying so directly, they teach that burnout is not a risk to be managed but a badge to be earned. That is the emotional fuel that powers a 9-9-6 culture.

Behind the scenes, many of these patterns are enabled by weak planning rather than malicious intent. A lot of punishing work cultures emerge not because leaders want to harm their people, but because they never build the discipline to design realistic workloads. Everything is framed as urgent, nothing is truly sequenced, and almost no one has the authority to say, “Not this quarter.” The same three or four people become critical dependencies for nearly every initiative. Projects are scoped as if the team had twice its actual headcount. In that environment, the only way to keep promises is to extend work hours. Leaders tell themselves, “We can handle it if everyone just pushes a little.” Over time, that “little” becomes the standard. Instead of hiring, cutting scope, or stretching timelines, they ask their people to stretch their lives.

There is also a psychological signal that is easy to overlook but deeply important. In a company sliding toward 9-9-6, pushback begins to feel dangerous. Team members who ask for reasonable boundaries start to be described as “not a culture fit” or “not hungry enough.” Someone who turns off notifications after hours is treated as less committed than the colleague who answers instantly at midnight. Managers complain that younger staff are “soft” when they question endless overtime. People see how others are judged, so they stop speaking up when expectations feel unreasonable. They work through headaches, family emergencies, and spiritual commitments because they are afraid of losing status or opportunity. From the outside, the company looks productive and driven. Inside, many people are quietly resigning themselves to a life where saying no is more threatening than exhaustion.

If you are a founder or senior leader, one of the clearest indicators is your own life. You may be the last one to admit it, but your body and closest relationships are often the first to report that something is wrong. You might notice that you are constantly telling your partner, parents, or children that “next month will be calmer,” but the calendar never actually changes. You may feel wired late at night, unable to switch off even when you step away from your desk. You feel guilty when you are offline in the evening, even for a few hours. If you, with your level of control and equity, feel trapped by your schedule, imagine how it feels for someone lower in the hierarchy with fewer options. If the only way you can keep the company afloat is by living a personal version of 9-9-6, it is only a matter of time before that expectation spreads through the team.

Recognizing these signs is not about shaming yourself or your leadership team. Culture drift happens in high pressure environments. The real test is how quickly you take responsibility once you see the pattern. It starts with naming the reality honestly. You sit down with your leadership group and say explicitly that you see signs the company is moving in the direction of 9-9-6 and that this is not the culture you want to scale. You describe the patterns openly, not to blame individuals but to bring what is hidden into the light. From there, you need to change more than words. The fastest way to rebuild trust is to make structural decisions that cost you something. For example, you could commit that core meetings will not be scheduled after a certain hour and then hold senior leaders accountable to that rule first. You could protect weekends by default, allowing exceptions only for true incidents, followed by a serious review of why those incidents occurred and how to prevent repeats. You can simplify the roadmap, cut or delay non essential projects, and hire or reshuffle responsibilities so that the same people are not chronically overloaded.

Finally, you must model the boundaries you want your team to believe in. That might mean taking real time off and not secretly working through it. It could mean leaving the office on time several days a week, turning off notifications in the evening, and refusing to glorify stories of unhealthy sacrifice. Praise the engineer who delivers a complex feature on time because the project was well scoped and planned, not only the one who pulls an all nighter to save a badly designed sprint. As a leader, you are always broadcasting a message through your choices. Either you are telling people that their lives matter as much as the company, or you are teaching them that the company comes first in every season. One path leads to a short, intense story that burns out your best people and eventually you as well. The other path gives you a chance to build something that can survive beyond your personal stamina, supported by people who still have the energy and desire to stay. The signs of 9-9-6 are visible long before the culture becomes toxic. The question is whether you are willing to read them and redesign, or whether you only pay attention once the damage has already been done.