Ricardo Semler - The seven day weekend

• Relentlessly asking "Why" into deep levels
• Soon enough there are no easy, comfortable answers
• This explosion of technology means we must re-gain the time we've lost to the merging of personal and work life. People should be allowed and encouraged to re-arrange their week, drop the traditional notion of a weekend, and divide the seven days among company time, personal time and idleness
• Enjoy a sunny Monday on the beach after working through a chilly Sunday
• If I insist on standard work hours, I may be sacrificing a certain amount of employee potential every day. By encouraging uniformity, I lose productivity.
• Punctuality is a mind-set. It has no relation to watches.
• Stress is the difference between your expectation and reality.
• The list of stressful activities includes going on vacation - theres the expectation that it will be perfect, of how many things need to be arranged before you leave. Not to speak of the stress when you are about to return, and start to fret over the work or mail or errands awaiting you. No wonder there is so much shouting at airport counters.
• Another source of stress and disappointment is the expectation that the workplace is an extended family.
• The fact is, you dont have to like people to work with them.
• Organizations make it possible for employees to feel exhilaration once in a while. Let them get invovled to the point that they shout "yes!" and give each other High Fives because they did it their way - and it worked.
• If the people Arent motivated, they dont need to sign up for motivation training - they need a different job!
• Its human nature to lose interest in anything after time!
• People cannot be passionate about doing the same thing over and over. That particularly true about companies that are highly departmentalized. Even more so if the company spells out job parameters.
• Companies need to understand that interests tend to be cyclical. At Semco we offer incentives to employees to move around different jobs and departments.
• Employees need the latitude to try sifferent jobs because man of them emerge from an educatino system that compels them to make career and training choices at a very young age, when they have little information about professions and no experience.
• Thos who stick around simply learn to live with boredom. But thats a huge waste of human potential.
• We are of the opinion that assembling special people is more difficult than finding something for them to do- or, as is our case - letting them find something profitable to do. Wed become famous for hiring people without having a job for them
• Sales! people would exclaim - he has never sold a pencil in his life! Thats what qualifies him, I would insist. We need to find new ways to sell, and make more solid pitches to customers.
• A human resources department once had 90 people. We decided the department really had no reason to exist. … They blossomed because manager are uncomfortable dealing with personnel issues.