Product Description

This is the international bestseller that tells how Semler tore up the rule books - and defied inflation running at up to 900 per cent per year! Workers make decisions previously made by their bosses. Managerial staff set their own salaries and bonuses. Everyone has access to the company books. No formality - a minimum of meetings, memos and approvals. Internal walls are torn down. Shopfloor workers set their own productivity targets and schedules. Result - Semco is one of Latin America's fastest-growing companies, acknowledged to be the best in Brazil to work for, and with a waiting list of thousands of applicants waiting to join it. Learn Ricardo's secrets and let some of the Semco magic rub off on you and your company.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8548 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 332 pages

Review
'The way that Ricardo Semler runs his company is impossible; except that it works, and works splendidly for everyone. I relish this book. It revived my faith in human beings and my hope for business everywhere' Charles Handy

The Times
‘Semco takes workplace democracy to previously unimagined frontiers’

Synopsis
This is the international bestseller that tells how Semler tore up the rule books - and defied inflation running at up to 900 per cent per year! Workers make decisions previously made by their bosses. Managerial staff set their own salaries and bonuses. Everyone has access to the company books. No formality - a minimum of meetings, memos and approvals. Internal walls are torn down. Shopfloor workers set their own productivity targets and schedules. Result - Semco is one of Latin America's fastest-growing companies, acknowledged to be the best in Brazil to work for, and with a waiting list of thousands of applicants waiting to join it. Learn Ricardo's secrets and let some of the Semco magic rub off on you and your company.

Customer Reviews

An unorthodox approach to running a business
Ricardo Semler calls himself a maverick, but he's actually a visionary. Semler, now 49, was way ahead of the curve 25 years ago when he radically altered the structure and philosophy of his father's company, Semco. Long before most businesses acknowledged that employees were thinking, feeling human beings and not timecard-punching robots, Semler rebuilt the infrastructure at Semco, eliminating layers of bureaucracy and allowing employees to decide their own fates. They determined their own schedules, pay scales and dress codes. Semler drastically reduced paperwork; he restricted memos, for example, to a single page. He believed that empowered employees, freed of their corporate shackles, would be motivated, creative and productive. You may find some aspects of that approach unrealistic or totally impractical for your organization. You may even think Semler is crazy. At the very least though, getAbstract believes executives should give careful consideration to his approach. His innovations are still relevant, even a quarter of a century later.

Best management practice now made easy!
As a management consultant I found this book very useful indeed - much of it is directly applicable to shop-floor and pressure-politics situations - the 20-page cartoon "rulebook" at the end is more than worth the price of the book itself - buy it! And if you have the courage, apply what it says, too: It's been known for some time that organizations are designed according to "command and control" principles that very poorly match how humans are really built to behave. More complex self-ordering behavior is always observed when any lack of hierarchy exists, and the hierarchies that do emerge tend to be more effective than those that were designed by managers with experience in previous eras. Semler just chose to trust it more than, say, Tom Peters. Prof. Nicholson, head of London Business School recently wrote (in the Harvard Business Review) that Semler's model was the only one to really respect "stone age nature" of human behavior (the many insights from evolutionary psychology that tell us that we're far more often feeling our way through decisions than thinking our way through).

Semlers assessment of Human Resource Management (HRM) practice is truly radical but built on a foundation of good management practice and a healthy dose of common sense. HRM managers and departments confuse traditional and successful hierarchies and should be the first thing to be axed if any organisation is serious about survival in the 21st Century.

Excellent book and guide, highly practical and an enjoyable read.

A Business Too Good To Be True?
It's almost unbelievable - an experiment in culture change that worked wonders. This inspiring tale of Ricardo Semler's successful 'quest' to run his company in the interest of all it's stakeholders is tremendous. It may well be easier to influence the direction of a business when you're the owner (as per Semler), but this great read helped me look at and adapt my own management style in an entirely new way (even within a large organisation). I only put it down in order to start implementing many of the ideas it contains. Well written and thought provoking.