Maverick - Ricardo Semler

This is a business book with a difference! For one, it is not about a multi billion dollar corporation like, say an Exon, or Microsoft. It is about a Brazilian company, called Semco. And the second key difference is, the author, also the owner of the company, does not boast about the good things in his organization. He is proud of them.

Well the theme of the book is pretty straightforward. A successful company in a sinusoidal economy, and an owner with a strain of megalomania in him and therefore he decides to write a book. Well, I excuse the writer for the megalomania bit. Because this is one company that did merit a book. Not as much because it was successful, but because the company believes in the philosophy of, as we say, ‘having a life’.

Semco has done a lot of things differently. Corporate democracy where the employees decide everything from the color of the office walls to the time they come to work to even their salaries is a unique concept implemented by Semco. That, broadly, forms the theme of the book. It also explains, why, despite the obvious on-the-face, impossibility of giving such a freedom to employees, the scheme does work. I will not detail the stories of the company. There are just too many and all of them are just too good to choose amongst them.

The owner, Ricardo Semler, is a man I have tremendous respect for! In the modern era of cut throat competition it is fashionable to be a workaholic. Ricardo, or Dickie, disagrees. It’s not that he shuns work. Or doesn’t have a business vision. But it’s just that he realizes that having fun in life is more important. And honestly, workaholics are only living a delusion that work is actually fun for them. I ramble. Back to Dickie. He takes a two month of every year for vacations, believes that watching a movie on a Monday afternoon is a lot more commendable than working on a Saturday, and he actually is proud of the fact that most of the decisions in the company are taken by others and he is not even invited to most meetings, actually documents that he doesn’t take a whole lot of calls he gets… man… I could go on, and you would get the picture of that good for nothing work-weasel guy out of Dilbert comics. But then, Ricardo Semler does run a company. A successful one at that. And though he is not invited to meetings, knows about his business. So he is not a Jack Welch. But he sure as hell is a lot more interesting.

A lot of business books get very pedantic. Suggesting that what they do is the best in the world and everyone should adopt their ways. The only thing it does is feed the egos of the management of that company. And Maverick holds its reins tightly enough to not fall into that cliff. Eventually, granting that there would be a whole lot of things that people in Semco crib about, it still seems like a fun place to work for! So for the people who might not get a chance, the book is the next best way of learning how a company ought to function. This really is a business book with a difference.