Few days ago I have posted extracts from a book called “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler. I was impressed with the author (he had gone to Harvard Business School not to learn their management skills but to teach them his management skills. I like these kinds of people for whom life is beyond Harvard, MIT, IAS, IIMs, IITs) and his way of managing his companies in somewhat different manner. The whole book was so absorbing and interesting that I had developed murderous tendencies towards those who tried to disturb me while I was engrossed in the book. My good friend Lokesh had suggested visiting this link.
After reading the page suggested by Lokesh, I just wanted to say my intension was not to project Semco ( the corporate) as an uncensored unit.I was not talking about an egalitarian system or welfare system. Ricardo Semler too did not talk about it. He always maintained that his corporate is not like a happy family unit. This book just struck me as different from others that is why I posted the extracts from it. I was not talking about totally egalitarian, self-organized, self-managed and founded on principles of members’ happiness and well-being, not growth and shareholders’ profit organizations.
In his book the author himself claimed that standards are pretty high at Semco and those who do not perform are kicked out by the workers themselves. The difference is here. The same is the case with salary. If someone is setting extraordinarily high salary for himself/herself, they find themselves frozen out by the workers themselves. This way workers and employees know how an enterprise function, they identify with the company and in certain instances at Semco they protested against a high bonus for themselves because they know in the long run how they ( workers & employees) will bear the burnt of it. So it is all about learning about the intricacies of running a business by workers and not like organizations you and me work where nobody knows what is happening in the company, how owner and their efficient CAs are cooking the books
( Remember Arthur & Anderson, Enron? The list is endless) and the shareholders who have invested their life’s savings will be out in the open? I find it heartening that at Semco workers don’t have a schoolmaster warped in sophisticated word called “supervisor”. To whom they ask “Sir/Mam can I go to toilet?
Actually it’s a bit difficult to truly understand the principles of participative management, delegation of power and of Ricardo Semler’s open channels of communication. Because right from the beginning we are conditioned to thing, act, behave in certain manner. And companies try to mould our minds further, just as our parents do since childhood. Most of us are working in companies where we get information from grapevines, where we are treated like schoolboys/girls, our bosses told us what to wear and what not to (but not as bluntly as I am putting it, it is fed to us as “organizational Culture”) where workers are stereotyped as thieves and a body search is carried out when they leave the office premises. At Semco management stopped body search of workers. From where the loudest noise came? From the workers themselves! Their main concern was they would be held responsible if “something” happened. They didn’t want self respect. How as human being we let companies capture our minds and ultimately our dignity.
