Hakiri

Ricardo Semler is the CEO and majority owner of Semco SA, a Brazilian company best known for its radical form of industrial democracy and corporate re-engineering, a.k.a The Democratic Company.

Here follow a few extracts from things that I have came across while researching Semco and Ricardo Semler:

Bieber Labs have a nice summary plus some ideas laid out in a blog post. Bieber Labs summarizes a few common themes that seem to be predominant in Semler’s lectures and books. Here is the list:

• Trust people to do the right thing for the company
• Give them freedom and authority to work the way they want to
• Push decisions down the chain as far as possible
• Work in small batches and change things that aren’t working
• Allow those who are capable of leading to lead, no matter what their title or position is
• Put quality checks in place – whether it be test-driven development, or quality checks at each step in an assembly
• Fix problems at the core and stop the line as quickly as possible – in development this would be TDD and automated builds. Once a problem is found, find the root cause and put a test or quality check in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again
• and finally, Trust people to do the right thing for the company

Also, 37signals have some blog posts on Ricardo Semler’s work and in particular a post on one of his lectures that took place in MIT not that long time ago. Here is a quick summary of some of the stuff they’ve summarized from the talk:

Most business plans are wishful thinking

A 5 year plan is just an extrapolation added to wishful thinking. Have you ever seen a business plan that says, “I’m going to go up 5% and then down -14% and then -22% and then I’m going to recuperate a little bit and then it’s going to go to hell?”

`Cuz that’s what happens. That’s how it looks in practice, but that’s not the way we design it. We’re willing to trick ourselves into thinking we have control as long as we do it with wishful thinking.

Growth is overrated for companies

The assumption that growth is good for companies is a very difficult one to sustain. There is no evidence whatsoever that companies that grow a lot do better than companies that don’t grow a lot.

Admit what you don’t know

We don’t know where we’re going, but we’d rather not pretend that we do. Because we think pretending is a lot more dangerous than admitting that we don’t. Talking about specific numbers more than six months out is improbable. Think about the future but don’t write it down. If you write it down, you have to follow it.

Make meetings voluntary

All our meetings are on a voluntary basis. Because if it’s getting boring, go. If no one’s left, do we really need to do this?

Most hiring is like internet dating

[On hiring] The [typical] process of recruitment and selection in a company is basically an internet dating process. You say your company is Brad Pitt and she says she’s Angelina Jolie and you go and meet at a bar. You get together for two quick meetings and then you decide to get married and hope it works.

[Instead of that,] we take qualified candidates, the ten that fit the bill, and ask them to come in together. Then we have whoever wants to be involved interview these people. This will go for hours. Then [the interviewers] write down the two people who they want to keep. The two who score highest come back and spend the whole day here and talk to anyone they want. The result is less than 2% year turnover.

Do nothing sometimes

Sometimes doing absolutely nothing, even about a critical decision, will end up bring through a solution. The idea that we alone can be trained to know the answer is a very dangerous rational.

We need more democratic workplaces

We will send our sons anywhere in the world to die for democracy. But I’ve never seen a democratic workplace. So it’s very important for our lives except where we spend 60% of our time. There must be something wrong with that.

Balance your life

Every one of us has learned how to send emails on Sunday night. But how many of us know how to go a movie on Monday afternoon. You’ve unbalanced your life without balancing it with something else. The opposite to activity is not leisure. It’s idleness.

Although some of these concepts sound very interesting you should really try to make up your own mind.