He is not even a fixed CEO；;
He maintains the highest trust and respect for employees;
He thinks his duty is to mix up the water and even poke holes in the ship so that his crew can find a way to solve it;
He advocated more thorough democracy, and as a result, he no longer owned Semco.
What planet are you from?
Employees can voluntarily attend any meeting of the company, and there are always two empty chairs on the board of directors, and all employees can come on a first-come-first-served basis; The company has no business plan, no mission vision, no long-term budget, no human resources department, no vice president of IT, no chief operating officer, no fixed CEO, no dress code for employees, no job description, and no one approves expense accounts.
Young employees can spend a year wandering around the company in order to find their favorite jobs, and they can also choose their own training programs instead of being decided by their superiors or human resources departments. In addition, employees can take three consecutive years off for whatever reason. ...
Is this still the company? Many business people even ask their bosses, "What planet are you from?"
Ricardo semler will never be surprised by such a problem, because it is he who leads SEMCO, Brazil's "most successful" diversified operation company, providing a wide range of products and services, from office air conditioning spare parts to inventory management and environmental planning. In just a few years, the annual income has increased from $35 million to $2120 thousand, and it is expected to continue to soar to $65,438 billion in the next few years.
Semler is keen on free management and never gives orders. He doesn't even want to admit that he is CEO. He hates titles, both for himself and other managers in the company. Salem's father, an Austrian immigrant, founded Semco more than 50 years ago to produce patented vegetable oil centrifuges. By 1980, the company has developed into a shipbuilding equipment supplier.
This year, old semler made up his mind to hand over the factory to his son and let him run the company in his own way. As soon as he took office, Salem fired 60% of the top managers in one afternoon. Those managers who left the company took away a lot of professional knowledge of the company, and semler was under considerable pressure.
In order to reduce the company's excessive dependence on shipbuilding, he quickly hired many tough managers and launched a series of strategic acquisitions. Soon, Semco achieved rapid growth, but new problems followed. The relationship between employees in the company continues to deteriorate, and the tense life also makes semler's physical condition on the verge of collapse.
In a book published later, he wrote: "At that time, the organization of Semco seemed to be very efficient and the employees were disciplined. However, their performance is not up to our expectations, or they don't like their jobs. I can't help thinking: how can we not spend energy on supervision when employees go to work, and how can we get rid of those red tape and artificial trivial matters? What will happen to the company if it is operated in a simpler and more natural way? "
In order to find the answer, semler read a lot of books, but his inspiration came from a non-master figure-Silva Bo Kikane. This person used to be the principal of a normal school and worked in the management training center of Ford Motor Company in Brazil and Semco's competitor KSB. However, the model of self-management and self-directed learning advocated by him has not been recognized by these two companies. Later, he and semler hit it off the first time they met. Their core belief in life is that employees who participate in important decisions will naturally be more motivated and can make better decisions than those who only passively accept orders from others.
After overcoming the impulse to complete the transformation of Semco company overnight, semler and Kikane decided to start with small things. The company canteen was complained by countless employees, so it was decided to hand it over to a group of employees for their own management. From then on, no complaints.
Then there is the question of working hours. In Sao Paulo, a city with a population of 6.5438+0.5 million, traffic jams are commonplace; Some rich people even go to work by helicopter. Semco's working hours are from 8 am to 5 pm, and workers spend a long time commuting, full of uncertainty. Semler and Keane just let employees set their own working hours to avoid the rush hour.
Many people in Semco management suspected that this would paralyze the assembly line, but this never happened. "The staff held several meetings and found a solution to this new workflow logistics problem. When this day comes, they have made arrangements to ensure that several groups can work in the factory at the same time. "
Later, they even decided to let employees set their own wages. This is a more complicated process, which includes hiring an analyst to determine the benchmark salary level of multiple positions in 35 different companies. The salary level of Semco is increased by 10% on the basis of the average salary of comparable companies, so as to reduce the company's job-hopping rate. From the janitor at the factory gate to semler's salary, it is publicly released.
The full implementation of participatory management in semler has made the internal unity of the company reach a considerable height and made the company pass an extremely dangerous era. 1990, the Brazilian government froze citizens' bank deposits and confiscated their property, pushing the country to the brink of collapse. This made Semco consider layoffs for the first time. As the company's financial situation and board meetings have been made public to employees, employees are well aware of the difficulties faced by the company. In this case, they even spontaneously proposed that employees be "laid off". At that time, many companies with better financial situation than Semco disappeared, but Semco survived. Like many presidents, semler used to wonder what his company would be like if he had an accident himself. One night in February 2005, he found the answer while driving at 85 miles an hour on a highway in Brazil.
It was a miracle: he had a terrible car accident, but he was lucky to survive when the window shattered and the body collapsed by 20 inches. But what is even more amazing is that in the months when he was lying in the intensive care unit and underwent many neck and face operations, the operation of Semco Group was not affected at all.
In the past 20 years, Semco has become a real laboratory, promoting semler's radical leadership. If you had invested more than $65.438 billion in SEMCO 20 years ago, you would get a generous return of $5.4 million today. This rare high return on investment can be said to be the result of participatory management in semler.
Now, just visit Semco Pump Factory in the suburb of Sao Paulo, and you will know how Semco applies this management method in practice. The factory is not much different from the traditional factory in appearance, but the walls here are rainbow-colored, which is the choice of employees themselves. There won't be a foreman shouting orders at employees here. The lathe worker can decide whether to drive a grinder or a forklift every day according to the needs of his work.
The 3000 employees in Semco factory set their own working hours and salary levels, and subordinates hired and evaluated their superiors. After lunch, workers can hang hammocks in the factory and take a nap. If employees work in the factory on Saturday afternoon, the company will encourage them to go to the seaside to relax on Monday morning. There is no organization chart, five-year plan, company value statement, dress code, written regulations or policy statement, only a thin "survival guide" manual. This comic book will introduce Semco's unique management methods to newly recruited employees. Employees vote for their leaders and decide whether to enter a new business field or quit the old business field. At this point, semler's vote is only one of the company's 3000 votes. Semler believes that if company leaders treat employees like generals, the result will be general frustration. It is difficult for people to be satisfied with the work they have done.
He believes that any organization, even a very large organization, can be subdivided into small departments composed of 10 or 12 people, but the power must be handed over to that level. /kloc-more than 0/2 people work together, and it is difficult to communicate effectively. "You can observe sports teams and families."
1999 By 2000, Semco began to do business with some IT people. At that time, semler took a fancy to two young people in San Francisco. They don't have a secretary or a receptionist, or even an office, only two dogs. But in any case, semler intends to cooperate with these two young people who are only 28 years old. Their website lists one of the dogs, a laboratory and two job opportunities. Semler later said to them, children, you are the people I want to work with.
But six months later, when semler went there again, they had a beautiful office with two secretaries and a front desk, but the two dogs were gone. Some bankers and investors have stepped in. Suddenly, everything changed.
Semler returned to Brazil and told the staff, "We are in trouble. It won't work. " In the past, the young man and he could clearly explain their conditions with eight points of view on a piece of paper. Now, they can only deal with one of the largest law firms in San Francisco. They had to wade through 700 pages of documents before signing.
"The size of an organization is not the main factor that determines its future destiny. Scale is affecting the way organizations operate. In fact, it is very important for employees to work in small teams. " Ali Gani is Cushman &; CEO of Wakefield Real Estate. During his six or seven years in office, the company achieved great success. In its heyday, although it grew slowly, it was still growing. However, semler had some discussions with American shareholders, and put forward a proposal to let Aligani leave, because he believed that the company's growth slowed down because the leaders' personal abilities had been exhausted.
"Are you crazy?" Everyone asked semler, "There were three people when he started his business, and now it has exceeded 1000!" Semler replied, "Yes, but his time is over, and his cycle is over. He can't adapt to the new market. " Hearing this, everyone was dumbfounded.
In fact, before letting Ali Jinani go, semler sent him an email: The first meaning expressed is that your time is over; Second, although your time is over and it's time for a new person to take over, almost no one in this world can see the advantages of others and improve themselves. Are you one of them? We will give you six months to find out.
Six months later, he came back and said, I can't stay any longer. Semler appointed a girl in her twenties to take his place. She reorganized the company structure and its business increased by 30% in one year.
Of course, semler didn't really fire Ali Jinani, but arranged for him to work in manufacturing management in Szemko, where he started his business. In the next two years, he tripled the number of operations. The traditional method of company training is, "I want to train you to be what I need." Semco advocates: learn what you want to learn, and I'm sure I can find you a suitable job.
The turnover rate of all industries is growing slowly, with an annual increase of 0.8% or 0.9%, which means that people will be tired of working for a while on the whole. Before they really offered to resign, they were in an unstable state. Therefore, there is an evasive way to curb the trend of weariness of learning.
Employees 10% or 20% of working hours are absent-minded, how difficult it is for the company to adapt. In the worst case, we need to hire 10% more people to make up for it. In addition, strategically, it will spread risks, because people who are not needed must be hired to work. And they may also be a stumbling block to the future.
Therefore, for absent-minded employees, semler allows them to take a leave of absence for up to three years for any reason. Some of them may leave forever, but some people want to come back to work after leaving for a year. He believes that this is a very humanized management system, which can often help employees who take time off to find their passion and confidence.
Regarding the sensational "retirement-anti-appointment" policy, semler believes that it is essentially a one-time cash transaction: "I will sell you your Wednesday, and you will buy it back one day."
Semler even thinks that the famous Jack Welch of General Motors dismisses 65,438+00% employees with poor performance every year, which is a kind of "mini-terrorism".
He feels that Welch's approach is losing a huge investment, because these people can continue to play their role by changing their jobs or use them in another way. Today's creative business world is a leap, which needs to gather hundreds of strengths and free thoughts and beliefs. Semler is dissatisfied with the fact that the company has a core figure, which he thinks will weaken the company's ability to go forward alone. In order to avoid this problem, the only way he found was to stay as far away from the management as possible. So he hasn't set up an office in the company headquarters for 10 years, and he can be away from the company for two or three months in a row.
Semco managers are never afraid of semler, for example, he was recently fired from the strategy committee. Someone asked him before, "Why are you a member of this committee?" And his answer is: "I don't know, because I have always been." Later, someone told semler that you were rejected by the strategy committee because of this stupid answer.
One of semler's key concepts is that core people are not conducive to business and stability, because the state of employees is the real state of the company. Semler's approach is to reduce his importance, but the result is that employees are still loyal to him.
Because of his tolerance for employees, employees never mind his mistakes. The employee said to him, "It's not your fault. Everyone makes mistakes. Our losses are much less than those of other companies. "