I bought Fortune magazine a few days ago and there is a really interesting article about Ricardo Semler and his company Semco in there. It is titled “The Anti-Control Freak”.
His father handed him control of Semco when Ricardo was 22 and he was quick to act. The company was not doing well and is now growing at 24% annually.
- He fired most top managers.
- Got rid of most management layers, there are 3 left now.
- He eliminated nearly all job titles. There is still a CEO but a half-dozen senior managers trade title every six months in March and September.
- Executives set their own pay and _everybody_ knows what the other one makes.
- All workers set their own hours.
- Every employee receives the company’s financial statements and the labor union holds classes so that they understand them.
- Workers choose their managers themselves and evaluate them frequently posting the result publicly.
If you told that to an old school manager they would freak out, but it seems to be working. Semco is now studied t Harvard and MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
The idea is simple. Treat people like adults and try to create a place where people want to come to work to and give up control, taking management out of running the company.
Some of his questions were. Why do we have job titles? Why can’t employees know all the financial details? Why do we have a headquarter? Semco has a few offices in Sao Paulo and if you want to leave home to use one – your choice – you go online and reserve a place.
He also touched an idea that I ask myself frequently. Why does a company have to grow? Of course for a public company the investors might want to get money out of it but hey, if they get a dividend that is good then you do not really need to grow. The best answer I had was probably that you need to try to grow because otherwise the danger of the opposite is high.
Why make money? Semler said something interesting: “I once worked it out – after $12 million, all millionaries are the same.” That’S because we’re all humans, confined to human scale. How many homes can you live in? How many meals can you eat? You can have a living room the size of a cathedral, but you won’t live in it. It’s too big.
The article ends:
“Semler is as clear as ever about why he does what he does. The challenge for the rest of us is dealing with the fact that it works.”
What I find interesting is that it seems rather close to the Chaordic Age by Dee Hock.
Monthly Archives: November 2001
Semco
Intelligence
T-Mobile, my mobile phone provider and sister company of Deutsche Telekom, launched a new service named “Happy Digits” with which you can gain points for money spent with your mobile phone. Cool service as such but the real clue comes in the rules.
You need to have a so called “Buchungs Konto Nummer” which is your account number for your _fixed line_ phone! So people can only use Happy Digits if they use Deutsche Telekom as their fixed line provider 
LOL. That removes me from that list as I am using a competitor for my fixed line. LOL
Not bad I have to say. Not that it will make me switch, but it is nice to see that DT tries to tie their companies together 
135 years later
“Young man under 18 wanted. Must have expert riding skills and facing possible death each day. Orphans preferred. Wage $25 a week”.
-Pony Express Ad 1860
“We know your talent is rare and that is why our compensation plan acknowledge that. In return we expect your full commitment to do wahtever it takes to bring in our project on time and on budget”.
-Software Company ad 1996
From: http://www.aditus.nu/jpgraph/jpg_phpoo.php
Found my new phone
So it seems I found my new phone. Coming 2nd (or 3rd) quarter 2002. Bluetooth ready, color screen, digital camera included, MMS, Java Enabled, POP, SMTP and IMAP mail support, HSCSD and GRPS ready … ahhh… Nokia did it again.
Second most sold book on Amazon.de
… is the fifth book of the Harry Potter series. Most likely appearing in the shops in 2002. LOL. And she already sold over 100 Million books, what now?
Returned from Kiel
Just spent the last few days in Kiel with my gf, her mother and her brother. It was a real fun few days I have to say and they passed way too fast. Her brother just returned from the Maledives (hope I spelled that correctly) where we was a tour guide for 8 months. Nice job. Get up, great some people, rest on the beach all day, maybe go out with the boat with a few people with dolphins swimming next to you, some more work in the evening and you are done. Of course that is after mastering the task a bit and not trying to solve everything at once. But the tails he has are amazing. He was diving once and on his second trip the diving instructor pointed up and there was a 4 meter wide fish above him. Sting ray? Not exactly, something like that, you know the flat ones that sometimes rest on the floor covered by sand, but not that one but the other one, there seem to be two kinds of them. But anyway, he said he wasn’t shure at this time if he should be amazed or scared
Nokia Game is going well but I somehow have missed some points it seems. Grrr… It’s still interesting to follow what is going on there and it should be another week until we are done. I don’t really want at Nokia 5510, which is the price for the top 50 people, anyway. There are some amazing Nokia phones coming out it seems, to be announced tomorrow in Barcelona. Once color screen one which looks cool.
Next weekend I will have my Management Challenge with the Open University. In Windsor near London. I should have been flying over from Brussels but now with Sabena bancrupt there were some problems with the way back. Now I switched to Lufthansa from Duesseldorf which are better times anyway. I should be meeting one or two of the people in my Tutor group at Heathrow airport and we will get a cab together. The place I am going to is some kind of old building form 1850 or something with 15 acres of land, swimming pool and everything. 100 students and 10 tutors will be there to go over last years subjects with us. As far as I have been told from other people it is a lot of fun, with almost no sleep. Ah well.
I also found out that one of the people from my old school is working at a security company now. He was one of the left wing kind of people, going to demonstrations, organizing them, being very scared of being listened to by the government in his appartment. Then he started getting into computers and started doing linux stuff, started doing encryption and now he is working at some security company that audits company networks. Doing speeches at conventions, running courses, auditing networks. It totally fits. Brought a smile on my face when he heard how well he is doing there.
Somebody else who really never seemed like somebody who wanted to study or work hard or somethig, heavy metal fan, drinking a lot, not doing anything … well now he has worked inside Nato with top security clearance and is doing is doctor in politics
There are some very interesting people in my class I have to say. Another one is finishing has law degree now, then he wants to become an airline pilot
A fun, have to go to the city now get a gift for a friend who is teaching martial arts here in cologne. It was his birthday yesterday. We are going out for thai food.
Seems like I’m nutty
The wonderful, charming and intelligent Keith (HIRE THIS FOOL!) has added me as an intelligent voice on his new journal at www.gonutty.com. Thanks Keith! I would like to add him as a friend in my LiveJournal but sadly he is using the competing Blogger. Now I will have to check out another page every day to look at the ramblings of another of my friends. A well,. check it out.
Nokia Game Goes On
Well, it seems that I will have to get up at 4 am today to get my character walking the longer route. I have to be at the destination tomorrow at 12 and this route will give me 4×60 points extra which would be a good thing I think.
I find it amazing though that I even think about getting up in the middle of the night just to move a character around
Still walking
This Nokia Game stuff is interesting. My character, Alpha, is currently walking to the cinema. About 5-6 hours ago I choose that way and it was said to be 6 hours. I just logged in to the game and Alpha is still walking I’ll have to log in again later. This is getting fun. Actually it is totally stupid but what I like is that you are playing for several weeks, can just forget it for a few hours but never really leave the game. That makes it interesting enough. Cool concept.
First Game Done
A well, that was actually nice. I just uninstalled IE6 and played the first game again. The story in general is interesting and the first game was about a system of 4×4 loud speakers, you click a speaker, it gives a ring tone, you click another one it also gives one and if they match you get points and they explode and are gone. Per try you get points deducted. It’s not the most challenging game. The question now is if I want to get up at 6 am tomorrow morning to help some skaters excape somewhere… hmm… 6am … hmm…
