THE BOSS WHO BREAKS ALL THE RULES
By Dominique Haijtema
OCTOBER 16 IS BOSS’S DAY.
HERE IS A GUY WHO IS EVERYONE’S DREAM BOSS.
NO, THIS IS NOT MADE UP.
HE REALLY DOES EXIST!
Ricardo Semler’s employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Meet the Brazilian businessman who does everything differently.
His favorite questions start with “why.” Why should employees feel compelled to read their emails on Sunday evening, but can’t go to the movies on Monday afternoon? Why should they take work home, but can’t bring their kids to the office? Why should they have to sit for hours in traffic getting to the office? Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler loves to question everything. His guiding principle? If you want creative employees, don’t smother them with ridiculous rules.
For 25 years, Semler has been putting into practice what increasing numbers of modern management gurus are now preaching. He heads a democratic company, Semco, where employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Managers don’t have secretaries, reserved parking spaces or even desks. There is minimal bureaucracy. No IT or human-resources departments. No mission statement, no five-year plan. Meetings are voluntary and every employee has a say in everything. Once, when Semler organized a meeting to discuss developing a speedier dishwasher for the consumer market, no one showed up. And the idea was shelved.
Semco was a traditionally managed engineering company when the young Ricardo Semler took over from his father.He was just 22 and had brought philosophical conflicts with his father to a climax: The son demanded that Semco steer away from its activities as a shipbuilding supplier and abandon autocratic management in favor of decentralization. He threatened to leave the company, so his father gave him a free hand. On his first day as director, Ricardo Semler fired 60 percent of senior management and began laying the foundation for a democratic organization.
Semco has long since abandoned its engineering activities. The company now develops software, is building a hotel and ecological resort and is involved with hospital and airport projects. Semler himself can’t even list all his company’s activities; he leaves that to his employees. Semco now has 3,000+ staffers (with very little turnover) and is growing 20 to 30 percent a year, with annual sales of $212 million (in 2003).
Semco’s radical policies do have a downside. Demand from outsiders wanting to visit its offices is so heavy that employees have complained of feeling like exotic attractions at a zoo. But that seems a small price to pay for such runaway success. Semler has written two international bestsellers about his unusual management method and has taught at renowned business schools, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. And he spends two months a year doing whatever he feels like doing.
A while back, while vacationing with his family in Switzerland, he agreed to meet me in a hotel bar before hitting the slopes, to discuss his groundbreaking management ideas. For a corporate executive, he seemed unusually cheerful and relaxed. Semler told me he had all the time in the world – confessing that he hadn’t worn a watch in years, and that suited him just fine.
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