Ricardo Semler has been writing about the unusual way his company thinks about work for almost 20 years. His most recent book, The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works, was published in 2003, but he continues to travel around the world letting people in on the secrets behind his company’s success.
Ricardo’s books and ideas are not for everyone, but for many they will forever change the way one thinks about the nature of work (especially within a corporate organization). He defends the premise that if people are expected to act like adults in their non-work life, why should they be treated any less like adults at work?
Semler cuts through most of the traditional, accepted assumptions of how an organization is run by repeatedly asking why, why, why. Why is the workweek Monday through Friday for everyone? Why does everyone have to work the same hours in the same place? Why do we need an HR department? Why do we need an organization chart? Why can’t workers decide their own salaries?
And he’s no ivory tower academic.
For over 25 years he has been using this philosophy to guide him as he has grown his father’s small, antiquated manufacturing company into a major corporation with many diverse lines of business and over 3000 employees. His company has impressive profits and almost no turnover. Every year, businessmen and academics alike fly to his headquarters in Brazil to see firsthand how this is possible, but few are able or willing to make such radical changes in their own organizations. Why is this? And how might it be possible to trigger a revolution? Check it out and let us know what you think.
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