5 Posts found for Author: Ricardo Semler

Being prepared to make major changes is what most executives will not do or are not prepared to do. Certainly this is true of corporate boards. Look at their makeup: twelve guys who are in other businesses and who have other lives to live. Why would they want to create havoc? So […] they’ll make cautious instead of intrepid decisions. Boards are set up to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Change Management, Corporate Governance, Management, Organizational Behavior

By eliminating the bottom 10 percent every year, you’re losing a tremendous investment, because these people could change places and be used in other ways. You’re also sending the message up and down the line that your company is a military hierarchy. The Welch paradigm is, after all, a military paradigm; it is a Norman Schwarzkopf paradigm. What’s the difference between them? None to speak … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Human Resources, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

It’s so easy for people to hide behind a mission statement, to follow the military model—to go there, find, and destroy. Why? That’s not a question to be asked. In the end, a mission statement is reductionist: If this is my mission, then everything else is not. Even more so a credo. When you say, That’s the way we do things around here, that signals … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ricardo Semler | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Management, Mission, Organizational Behavior, Vision

First published in Brazil in 1988 as Turning the Tables , this book was the all-time best-selling nonfiction book in Brazil’s history. Semler, the 34-year-old CEO, or “counselor,” of Semco, a Brazilian manufacturing firm, describes how he turned his successful company into a “natural business” in which employees hire and evaluate their bosses, dress however they want, participate in major decisions, and share in 22 … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Ricardo Semler | Subjects: Management, People

Semler, the Brazil-based CEO of Semco, believes corporations and employees can become successful by bucking tradition and thinking wildly outside the box. He attempts to explain Semco’s success (a company with $212 million in annual revenue and “no official structure… no organizational chart… no business plan or company strategy”) and how its principles can be applied in other companies to make working environments more appealing … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Ricardo Semler | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Strategy