Couple of days ago I watched this a video of a speech given by Ricardo Semler, the owner and CEO of Brazilian company Semco AS (they have a horrible website, perfect example of Mystery Meat Navigation). Semler has transformed Semco’s organization to something quite extraordinary, really creating a sort of democratic organization, which apparently seems to work pretty well.
In his speech Semler asks many very thought-provoking questions, such as if we are used to demand democracy and fairness in the civil world, and would not want to live in an undemocratic society, how are we so happy to accept lack of democracy and fairness in the business world. According to Semler, structures of companies are based on military organizations, and as such they neglect the power of human intuition.
Semler also ridicules the long-term plans that companies are used to make, saying that they usually are only products of wishful thinking. Also, according to Semler, the radical changes into industries very rarely come from inside the industry itself.
It’s a very interesting speech, best to see it by yourself from here.
