Books

Books : reviews

Ricardo Semler.
Maverick!.
Arrow. 1993

rating : 3 : worth reading
review : 13 July 1996

Ricardo Semler owns Semco, a Brazilian manufacturing industry with a novel approach to management. The employees are treated like the responsible adults they are. He contrasts this with the distrustful authoritarian approach, and with the paternalistic "we're all one big happy family" way of treating staff like children.

Semler describes the history of Semco, how the participative process works, and how it can be made to work elsewhere.

What is amazing is how "accidental" he makes Semco's history sound: it wasn't some great burning mission he had before it all started, it just grew, and became "obviously right" only after the fact.

Fascinating and thought-provoking.