Ricardo Semler
Ricardo Semler
Ricardo Semleris the CEO and majority owner of Semco Partners, a Brazilian company best known for its radical form of industrial democracy and corporate re-engineering. Under his ownership, revenue has grown from 4 million US dollars in 1982 to 212 million US dollars in 2003 and his innovative business management policies have attracted widespread interest around the world. Time featured him among its Global 100 young leaders profile series published in 1994 while the World Economic Forum also nominated him...
NationalityBrazilian
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryBrazil
Growth and profit are a product of how people work together.
Large, centralized organizations foster alienation like stagnant ponds breed algae.
It is not socialist, as some of our critics contend. It isn't purely capitalist, either. It is a new way. A third way. A more humane, trusting, productive, exhilarating, and, in every sense, rewarding way.
I believe no one can afford, endure or can stomach leaving half a life in the parking lot when she or he goes to work. It's a lousy way to live and a lousy way to work.
People are too keen to follow standard preconceptions of how organisations should work. All too often, we feel that we are unable to make changes and so hope that someone, somewhere in your organisation knows what we are doing and what the overall aim is.
The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.
The era of using people as production tools is coming to an end. Participation is infinitely more complex to practice than conventional corporate unilateralism, just as democracy is much more cumbersome than dictatorship. But there will be few companies that can afford to ignore either of them.
A high percentage of organisations develop a military rationale, whereby only a very small number of people make all of the decisions. There is little wonder, then, that people aren't keen to get out of bed and come to work on a Monday morning.
There is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its work force and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees
If you look at any kind of modern organization and you think, 'What are the foremost tools of power?' You will find that it is information.
For a company to excel, employees must be reassured that self-interest, not the company's, is their foremost priority. We believe an employee who puts himself first will be motivated to perform.
If you are giving back, you took too much.
The key to management is to get rid of the managers.
People have a reservoir of talent worth discovering. They just have to be given the opportunity to discover it in themselves