Maverick

Fairness is for Employees as …

6 January 2011

Fairness is for employees like quality is for customers—it takes years to build up but collapses over a singe incident. Ricardo Semler, Maverick, 1993, p.150.

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Work, Not Business

3 January 2011

This is not a business book. It is a book about work, and how it can be changed for the better. Ricardo Semler in Maverick, 1993, in a statement following the acknowledgements. Maverick was originally published in Portuguese as Turning the Tables in 1988.

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Democracy Is a Lot of Work

3 January 2011

Democracy is a lot of work, I kept telling myself and anyone else who would listen. It needs to be exercised with conviction and without subterfuge or exception. And it begins with the little things, like neckties, time clocks, parking spaces, and petroleum blue uniforms. Ricardo Semler in Maverick, 1993, p. 136. Maverick was originally published [...]

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Full Disclosure

3 January 2011

No one can expect the spirit of involvement and partnership to flourish without an abundance of information available even to the most humble employee. I know all the arguments against a policy of full disclosure. … But the advantages of openness and truthfulness far outweigh the disadvantages. And a company that doesn’t share information when [...]

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Maverick by Ricardo Semler

30 December 2010

This is a wonderful little book by the CEO of Semco, a corporation in Brazil. His father started the company and in 1980s passed it along to his rather young son who built a new kind of corporation using “open management” and advocating a “natural” and “democratic” workplace for “industrial citizens.” In 1984, Semco acquired [...]

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Semco, São Paulo, Brazil

28 December 2010

Throughout Maverick, Ricardo Semler’s book on the development of his corporation Semco, he expresses and implements ideas that are hauntingly similar to those of Gerard Endenburg. Semler calls his method “open management” and refers to democracy for workers. He never mentions Endenburg’s “sociocratic-circle-organization.” What was the connection between the ideas of Semler and Endenburg? Between [...]

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