Maverick

This is the freshest account I’ve read by a leader of his company’s transformational journey: Ricardo Semler became CEO of his father’s company, SEMCO, at the age of 21, and wrote the book in his early thirties, not to forget the transformative journey he just led.

But even more than the narrative itself, I loved Semler’s philosophical reflections, densely packed throughout the book. Example: “We simply don’t believe our employees have an interest in coming in late and doing as little as possible. After all, the same people raise children and elect mayors and presidents. They are adults. In SEMCO,… show more.

This book is the story of Semco, a Brazilian company that is widely known for it’s worker participation and democratic work environment.

I personally believe that the purpose of any kind of organization, besides earning money, is to give back to its community. Ricardo Semler, as the majority owner of Semco, took this idea and turned it up to eleven. The results have been staggering.

The book was first published in 1988. This means the author was introducing concepts that put the quality of workers before everything else during the 1980’s. For many organizations today, the ideas from this book… show more.

“The success story behind the world’s most unsual workplace” was how this amazing book was introduced when published back in 1988. 

Ricardo Semler writes about how he tried to run this Brazilian company after taking over for his father, inspired by what he just had learned from US business schools. The result was a disaster, both for the company and him. Recovering from a burn-out, he realised that the answer lay in doing the very opposite.

Check out the story about an amazing company where people even set their own salaries!

I read this book when I was still a… show more.

This book discusses how an innovative Brazilian CEO turned his company over to his employees because “they knew more about the business than he did.” It describes how they turned the company around and made it a booming success. The book details the transformation process and explains how it can be applied to other organizations.