Quotes from Ricardo Semler

But uncontrolled variables are what make dreams come true. If we change the way work works we can live the dream of work-life balance and sustainability.

Este grupo (que inclui supervisores, chefias e diretores) tem uma particularidade unica - é um grupo constituido de profissionais que deixaram de ser empregados, mas não chegaram a virar patroes. Sao os Roberta Close da empresa.

Ou seja, total capitulação da empresa à força da greve. A empresa começa com cara de Rambo e termina com jeitinho de Clodovil.

What lubricates the process for us is faith—faith supported by experience—that employees can pursue their self-interest and fulfill the company's agenda at the same time. If there's a match or alignment between what we want and what they want, the results will be twofold: While they're busy satisfying themselves, they'll satisfy the company's objectives, too. They succeed, we succeed.

The lack of challenge, meaning, and purpose would be suffocating. Human beings thrive on being productive, on working toward goals, on providing for their families, on building a future—just don't ask them to do it all the time and without the freedom to say, "Now, I need time for me.

Moving around limits tribal affiliations that are detrimental to democracy, communication, and innovation.

Now Semco employees are free to customize their workdays, to come in earlier or later than traditional schedules. The hours they work are determined by their self-interest, not by company dictates. They're the best judges of the amount of time and the proper place necessary to get their job done.

The second error is the assumption that business or the work environment is the only tribal affiliation people have. By sheer proximity, the workplace tribe may seem to dwarf all the others, but anyone who works at home will find they actually belong to four or five major tribes—starting with the family and extending outward to the neighborhood, the garden club, library volunteers, church, and the like.

Moreover, in my view, obtrusive and intrusive leadership becomes counterproductive by interfering with the free interplay of individual talent and interest.

We're in favor of a hierarchy of self-interest and talent and opposed to the symbols of power and control that come with it.

Companies hoping to recruit the best and the brightest must demonstrate that they trust their employees with the freedom to work anywhere. They must assume that they're buying talent and dedication, not what the Brazilians call "butt-on-chair time.

Here's a counterintuitive idea for you: For a company to excel, employees must be reassured that self-interest, not the company's, is their foremost priority. We believe an employee who puts himself first will be motivated to perform.

So we did what we always do when there is dissent: nothing. We believe blindly in the virtues of dissent. We don't want a crowd of brainwashed workers. We don't want them to sing company songs, memorize company mission statements, and learn to speak only when spoken to.

They're using a hundred-year-old system to choose their people while we respect a time-honored, hundred-thousand-year-old method of admitting members to the tribe. Cavemen and fellows in medieval artisan guilds worked no differently. They all based decisions on a newcomer's acceptance by an established group.

Corporations go through cycles of growth and retrenching, what I call corporate yo-yo dieting. Companies that expand continually are companies that grow fat. Then they're forced to diet, or downsize in "corp" speak, until they can grow again and reengineer (a new body in ninety days!), merge and acquire other companies (weightlifting and muscle training) until the cycle starts anew, and they're forced to reduce again (lose twenty pounds in six weeks!).

If you look at any kind of modern organization and you think, 'What are the foremost tools of power?' You will find that it is information.

People have a reservoir of talent worth discovering. They just have to be given the opportunity to discover it in themselves

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 someone else.

A high percentage of organisations develop a military rationale, whereby only a very small number of people make all of the decisions. There is little wonder, then, that people aren't keen to get out of bed and come to work on a Monday morning.

The purpose of work is to make the worker - whether a working stiff or a CEO - feel good about life.

Growth and profit are a product of how people work together.

We have absolute trust in our employees. In fact, we are partners with them.

One of the things that is very silly - and I hear from educators all the time - is that schools essentially teach kids to learn. They don't need school for that. Learning is what they do best.

Once employees feel challenged, invigorated and productive, their efforts will naturally translate into profit and growth for the organisation.