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
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.
I am not interested in...making sure that you (the employee) are here, that you are giving us so many hours a day. We need people who will deliver a final result.
I once worked it out - after $12 million, all millionaires are the same. That's because we're all humans, confined to human scale. How many homes can you live in? How many meals can you eat? You can have a living room the size of a cathedral, but you won't live in it. It's too big.
People are responsible adults at home. Why do we suddenly transform them into adolescents with no freedom when they reach the workplace?
Every one of us has learned how to send emails on Sunday night. But how many of us know how to go a movie on Monday afternoon. You've unbalanced your life without balancing it with someone else.
To survive in modern times, a company must have an organizational structure that accepts change as its basic premise, lets tribal customs thrive, and fosters a power that is derived from respect, not rules. In other words, the successful companies will be the ones that put quality of life first. Do this and the rest - quality of product, productivity of workers, profits for all - will follow.
People have a reservoir of talent worth discovering. They just have to be given the opportunity to discover it in themselves
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
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.
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.
Large, centralized organizations foster alienation like stagnant ponds breed algae.
There are companies which are prepared to change the way they work. They realize that nothing can be based on what used to be, that there is a better way. But, 99 percent of companies are not ready, [they are] caught in an industrial Jurassic Park.
We have absolute trust in our employees. In fact, we are partners with them.
The key to getting work done on time is to stop wearing a watch.