Ricardo Semler - Maverick

• ... our Sultan for HR (Yes, we still love to mock titles)
• Our board meetings have two open seats for the first employees that sign up, and two more for any person in a leadership capacity that cares to show. And we still depate strategy openly schedule meetings on a volunteer basis, and have leaders intervieweg by their future subordinates.
• Instead of ont headquarter building, we distribute identical offices across town
• As I tell our people constantly: we've all learned how to answer email on Sundays, but none of us has learned to go to the movies on Monday afternoon Until we learn that, we are email slaves harnessed to the wicked ways of the Profit and Loss Master.
• all financial information at Semco is openly discussed. Indeed, our workers have unlimited access to our books
• For truly big decisions, such as buying another company, everyone at Semco gets a vote. A few years ago, when we wanted to relocate a factory, we closed down for a day and everyone poiled into buses to inspect three possible new sites.
• If we're afraid to let people decide in which section of the plane to sit, or how many stars their hotel should have, we shouldn't be sending them abroad to do business in our name, should we?
• Semco has a profit-sharing plan. At Semco, profit-sharing is democratic.
• Our workers knew that production would suffer if they didnt coordinate their schedules, so thats what they did
• Well, we dont have as many bosses as we used to. As workers began to excercise more control over their jobs and assume more voice in our polices, the need for supervisors diminished. We have also reduced our corporate staff, which provides legal, accounting, and marketing expertise to our manufacturing untis, by more than 75%.
• Before people are hired or promoted to leadership positions, they are interviewed and approved by all who will be working for them. And every sic months managers are evaluate by those who work under them. The results are posted for all to see. Does this mean workers can fire their bosses? I guess it does, since anyone who consistently gets bad grades usually leaves Semco, one way or another.
• We simply do not believe our employees have an interest in coming in late, leaving early and doing as little as possible for as much money as their union can wheedle out of us. After all, these same people raise children, join the PTA, elect mayors, governors, senators and presidents. They are adults. At Semco, we treat them as adults. We trust them. We dont make our employees ask permission to go to the bathroom, or have security guards search them as they leave for the day. We get out of their way and let them do their jobs.
• In business, effort is too often confused with results
• And we had so damn many numbers, inside so damn many folders, that almost no on e was looking at them. But no one would admit it.
• In either plan we try to think in zero-based terma. Budgets should always be based on rethinking the company; most of the time, though, they_re not much more than last years numbers projected forward, and are about as ood as warmed-up coffee at two in the morning
• we introduced a programme that requires each executive to make an educated guess about the revenues, expenses, and profits for his department at the end of each month. A few days later, the official report is distributed
• People were afraid to sign their name to anything.
• if our executives were ashamed of their salaries, it might be becuase they felt they weren't really earning them, for if they merited their pay they could easily prove their worth, whether it was based on specialized knowledge, experience, education, or the mastery of a large departmene with a big budget and staff. Executives should be proud of what they earn, and their salaries ought to provide everyone with an incentive to rise.
• profit-sharing doesnt create employee involvement, it requires it.
• Man is by nature restless. When left too long in one place he will inevitably grow bored, unmotivated, and unproductive. ... a minimum of two years and a maximum of five years in a job were ample.
• There are so many benefits from job rotation, borh for employees and employer, that is a wonder so few companies encourage it. It obliges people to learn new skills, which makes life interesting for them and makes them more valuable.
• That led us to draw up a form subordinates now use to evaluate their managers twice a year.
• Its always better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission
• Our advances in technologyhave far outstripped our advances in mentality.