Ricardo Semler

CEO of Semco.

Author of Maverick, The Seven-Day Weekend, etc.

Proved that self-directed work-groups and WorkplaceDemocracy can be profitable over the long run.

Hmm. The books need to be read with care. He didn't really run a democracy. Notice the number of managers forced out because he said they couldn't fit in with the new way he wanted things. His word definitely was the final one; democracy was OK as long as the result was one he was happy with.

That was not my impression. The workers selected their managers, so the managers had to play by the rules to keep their jobs. Yes, he was the visionary, but he had to play by his own rules himself to get it all to work. Remember the crisis where the management had to agree to a 40% salary cut? -- ThomasEyde

It's in the bit of Maverick where he's setting this up. A lot of managers got pushed. And do you really think the workers could have voted him out? This happens a lot. There's Ken some-name-I-forget who did similar things with his engineering company in the UK; if you read that book, you also see that people are forced out "because they can't deal with the new ideas", which I think is just NewSpeak for "disagreed with the boss".

Those who got forced out at Semco at the beginning were those (at the top, by the way) who Semler recognized would not give up their hierarchical status and would fight his plan to move toward a democratic corporation. People rarely got forced after that. Read Semler's sequel, TheSevenDayWeekend?. He mentions that their turnover was 3 people out of 3000 in the most recent year (prior to publication).

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