Seven-Day Weekend [Paperback]

Ricardo Semler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2004

Email and paperwork have invaded homes. Most people know how to work on Sunday evening. But no one yet knows how to go to the cinema on Monday afternoon. A new way to work is needed. Since "Maverick!" was published, the growth and success of Semco have been explosive: it's now five times bigger than it was four years ago. It has embraced the internet world, expanded in services, and employs 2,300 people, compared to 350 when "Maverick!" was written. A new way of working has emerged at Semco of which the tell-tale signs are: hammocks where people rest during the day, Retire-a-Little Plans, the end of the head office, the abolition of control and boarding school mentality. The results: inordinate success for 20 years, practically non-existent staff turnover, and an organization that covers an enormous range of business activity, from machinery to environmental consulting, and from real estate advisory services to new business start-ups, smoothly and coherently. It's time for a new way to work to be created, and Semco is leading the way. "The Seven Day Weekend" tells the fascinating and unlikely story of how this can be achieved.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ricardo Semler, president of Semco S/A, the Brazilian machinery manufacturer, service provider and software company is internationally famous for creating the world's most unusual workplace. At Semco, workers choose their bosses. Financial information is shared with everyone. A high percentage of the employees determine their own salaries. And self-managed teams replace hierarchy and procedure --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

FOREWARNING

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits.”
—SATCHEL PAIGE

NEVER MIND THE CHEESE—who moved my weekend?

I’m serious. Where did it go? One minute Saturday and Sunday formed an oasis for rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation. The next thing we know the cell phone is ringing, e-mail is piling up, and the fax machine is vomiting paper onto the floor. Paradise lost. Welcome to the seven- day workweek.

I’ve got a much better idea, though, one that I’ve been road testing now for many years: the seven-day weekend. If the workweek is going to slop over into the weekend—and there’s no hope of stopping that from happening—why can’t the weekend, with its precious restorative moments of playtime, my time, and our time, spill over into the workweek?

It can and, I believe, must happen. In fact, the seven-day weekend is already happening at Semco, an unusual company that I’ll introduce you to in the pages ahead. What you are about to read is a combination of a political manifesto, a business case history, and an anthropological study. Before you shudder, groan, and heave the book across the room, I’ll hasten to add that it’s also a road map to personal and business success. We have to find a better way for work to work. The seven-day workweek is shaping up as a personal, societal, and business disaster. It robs people of passion and pleasure, destroys family and community stability, and sets up business organizations to ultimately fail once they’ve burned out their employees and burned through ever more manipulative and oppressive strategies.

The seven-day weekend approach is an alternative that bridges the gap between the airy theories of workplace democracy and the nitty-gritty practice of running a profitable business. I warn you, it’s messy, inefficient, and hugely rewarding. I’ve chosen the metaphor of the seven-day weekend as an anchor. You’re welcome to take the turn of phrase literally or figuratively. But don’t kid yourself: I’m not talking about abolishing work. A seven-day weekend, however pleasant a fantasy of endless strolls on the beach, will mix work time with personal time in new and possibly disconcerting ways. Don’t worry, though—it also doesn’t imply that you’ll be forever tethered to your laptop. Your first reaction may be dismay at the loss of your conventional weekend; after all, we naïvely define weekends as free time, personal days, idleness. But that definition is outdated. The traditional weekend and workweeks ended long ago. This book faces that fact and explores ways of making work more fun, and of finding a balance between work and private passions, so both can be significantly gratifying.

To do that, we must reorganize the workplace, both physically and culturally. At Semco, we’ve spent twenty-five years doing just that, primarily by constantly questioning the way we do things. When we started, everyone said we wouldn’t last. Now Semco employs three thousand people working in three countries in manufacturing, professional services, and high- tech software. But even now, I continue to hear that our experiments could never work anywhere else. Yet we go on proving that in redistributing the weekend across the workweek, our employees find balance and Semco makes money. In that regard alone, we are an excellent business case study. We fit neatly into any MBA examination of success.

It’s very simple—the repetition, boredom, and aggravation that too many people accept as an inherent part of working can be replaced with joy, inspiration, and freedom.

That’s what I wish for everyone who reads this book.

Ricardo Semler
(Lying in a hammock with a laptop and my little boy, having fed the ducks at a nearby pond)
On a Monday in May

ONE
ANY DAY

n Ask why?
n Give up control.
n Change the way work works.

I’M A CATALYST, AND that’s why I was on a ten-hour Varig flight from Sao Paulo to New York, fastening my seat belt and making sure the tray table was in an upright and locked position for landing.

You read that correctly the first time—catalyst. By definition a catalyst, usually an enzyme, initiates a reaction. The way I handle the role is by broaching weird ideas and asking dumb questions. Strictly speaking, I’m a highly evolved CEO, as in “Chief Enzyme Officer.”

As such, I was fated to make the trip the moment I casually said to my Semco colleagues, “I bet we can get the phone number of the Rockefeller Group by calling information. It must be listed, don’t you think?” It was. Like a good enzyme, I even offered to dial the number, too, since I was perched on the front edge of my desk, a favorite spot that allows me to get to my feet quickly to end meetings that start to drag.

“Oh, Mr. Mirante, you mean,” the company operator said when I blandly asked the name of Cushman & Wakefield’s president, pretending that I had just suffered a slight memory lapse.

“Yes, Mr. Mirante. Would you ring his office please?” Cushman & Wakefield is the commercial real estate arm of the Rockefeller Group. When Arthur Mirante’s secretary picked up the phone, I told her that I was calling from Brazil. For some reason that worked magic— maybe she had a secret fantasy about attending Carnival in Rio—the next thing I knew President Mirante himself was on the line.

It took about three minutes; record time, considering he didn’t have a clue about me or my agenda. I explained who I was—leaving out the bit about being a catalyst—and suggested that we get together face-to-face to discuss a business proposition. My new friend, Arthur, agreed without pressing for details.

Now, standing in the cab rank at JFK Airport, having been stranded by a no-show limo driver, I experienced my latest pang of misgivings: “Cushman & Wakefield is going to agree to partner with an obscure Brazilian company? Get serious, Ricardo. This is one weird idea that’s about to fizzle.”

A cacophony of Indian sitar music provided the sound track for my trip through Queens to midtown Manhattan. I asked the cabbie to turn it down, but he couldn’t hear me over the noise. Ears ringing, I got out on Fifth Avenue, wended my way past the famous ice-skating rink (in springtime hibernation), noted the façade of Radio City Music Hall with its flashy neon marquee, and entered the high-rise domain of one of the world’s largest real estate management firms.

I whisked through the revolving door and sailed straight past the security desk without stopping, affecting the bearing of a Rockefeller scion (Rocky Ricardo?), a little game I used to play prior to 9/11. I was pretty good at looking like I knew where I was going; guards rarely stopped me for ID or destination checks. (Alas, those days are over in the United States.) The elevator ride to the thirty-sixth floor gave me just enough time to review my predicament without triggering full-fledged qualms. Surrounded by hundreds of engineers, brokers, and high-end property managers, I was about to propose that Semco, a company with zero experience in real estate, join forces with the Rockefeller family to handle the nitty-gritty business of facility management in Brazil and the rest of Latin America.

I introduced myself to the receptionist and moments later was sitting on an opulent silk- covered sofa wondering if I had been wise to wear jeans and a blazer. The doubts about my attire were almost instantly reinforced when into the office suite strode Arthur Mirante II, tall and stylishly draped in an elegant, Italian-designer suit that reeked of many fittings by cadres of attentive artisans.

His firm handshake and warm, open smile put me at ease. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be having fun and so, presumably, was he. I noticed that he gave my jeans a quick sideways glance of appraisal. We bantered a few moments about not usually setting up meetings based on a three-minute phone call, or flying ten hours on the same flimsy pretext, and then quickly got down to business. I summarized my proposal, emphasizing Semco’s background in manufacturing and maintenance, but Mirante looked disappointed.

“I’m sorry you came all the way for this, then,” he said. “The problem is we don’t make much money in that business. It mainly supports our other real estate interests.”

I countered that I was confident we could make a business out of it in Brazil. Mirante asked if I really wouldn’t be more interested in the brokerage business. I confessed that my knowledge of real estate started and ended with buying my home.

With that the executive shrugged and took me to see his facility management people. Afterward, I suggested that each of us put up $2,000 to cover the legal expenses of establishing the venture. We’d be fifty-fifty partners. Arthur agreed, we shook hands, and off I went in a hurry to pick up tickets to the New York Philharmonic, have lunch with the writer Peter Carey, and hit the legendary Strand bookstore for three hours of browsing their stock of used and remaindered books.

That was April of 1993. A year later, the Semco Cushman & Wakefield joint venture employed 150 people and did $4 million in business. Today, it employs 1,300 people and has gross revenues of more than $65 million.

Why am I telling you this story, much less starting a book with it? For one thing, you couldn’t concoct a more outrageous and unlikely combination. Staid, proper, blue-blooded Cushman & Wakefield united with casual, off-the-wall, planning averse, nearly anything goes Semco. Talk about an odd couple! But I contend the strangeness is its strength. There’s resiliency, flexibility, and sustainability to the venture that would be lacking in a more conventional pairing.

Even so, my purpose is much more subversive than merely recounting an unlikely success story. I believe the old way of doing business is dying, and the sooner it’s dead and buried the better off we all will be. Incendiary words, yet Semco’s alliance with Cushman & Wakefield, as well as other joint ventures that I will... --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House (February 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099425238
• ISBN-13: 978-0099425236
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.2 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #552,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A New Way to Work that Works, March 15, 2007

By 

Walter H. Bock "Wally Bock - Author, Blogger,... (Charlotte NC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works (Hardcover)

Semco, Ricardo Semler's privately held Brazilian company is hard to describe, mostly because it looks and acts so different from what we expect a company to be. That's why Semler devotes the first chapter of Seven Day Weekend to telling us what Semco is and does and what makes it a different place to work. At the end of the chapter, he says this:

"Although I still can't definitely answer the question about what Semco does do, I can say we've changed the way work works and improved the quality of our lives - and so can you."

After reading Seven Day Weekend, I still can't tell you exactly what it's about. But I can say that it will change the way you think about work and open up new possibilities for you.

There's a lot of talk these days about changing the workplace and making it more democratic and self-organizing and participative. We've seen pieces of this at places like WL Gore and, more recently at Best Buy. We've read the business press articles and pundit opinions.

But the fact is that if we are going to see significant workplace change on a large scale, there will need to be more companies that act like Semco. The owners of those companies will have to try things out and show us. That's what Ricardo Semler has done.

If you want to see how the wisdom of crowds works out in a company, it's in here. If you want to see how democratic principles work out in management, that's here, too. And if you want to see things about self-organizing and self-managing work groups and chaos theory, that's here too.

But Seven Day Weekend is not a how-to manual. You won't come out of it with a bunch of checklists or bulleted lists of sure-fire techniques. You will improve your understanding of a few key points
* People can be trusted to make decisions that are not only in their best interests, but in the company's best interest.
* In most cases, following the natural law of things works at least as well and often better than trying to control and direct.
* Strategy Semco-style is about building on talents and following ideas and not about master plans.

You will want to know if Semco has been successful in a traditional business way. It has been extravagantly successful, growing revenue and profits at 40 percent per year for two decades. Not only that, the company survived the convulsions in the Brazilian economy in the 1980s and 1990s.

And you'll want to ask Ricardo Semler about how he works as CEO and how he controls things. Here's his answer.

"I don't. I let the system work for itself."

The bottom line is that you should read this book because it will give you a window into a very different way of working and organizing a business. It's a system that's uncommon as well as uncommonly successful. And it's a system we can learn from.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good! Thought provoking. Less than Maverick though, March 8, 2008

By 

Bas Vodde (Singapore) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works (Hardcover)

Seven-Day weekend is the second (English) book by Richardo Semler, the CEO of Semco. Semco is a weird Brazilian company known for it's modern HR practices. The history of Semco and Ricardo Semler was explained well in his first English book: Maverick.

The author makes a point that the workweek has invaded the weekend via internet and email. Now it's time to abandon the standard week/weekend thinking and have weekend whenever we want and have week whenever we want. So we'll have a seven day workweek AND a seven day weekend.

The book is a collection of stories and opinions by Richardo which are organized according to the days of the week. Every day a couple of stories, mostly about Semco but also about other activities in which Richardo was involved in.

Some of the more interesting points and stories are, for example, where the author is questioning the need to always grow. In business it seems to be the purpose of the business to grow bigger. Richardo questions this purpose and asks why this is. Cannot companies stay small and then still be successful?

Seven-day weekend is certainly worth reading. It's a small book it takes maybe a day to read it. Its well written, it keeps you awake and the stories are interesting. Though, I personally found it less interesting than Maverick (which I had read first). If you need to chose between the seven day weekend or Maverick, I'd go for Maverick. If, after Maverick, you still do not have enough of Semler, then the seven-day weekend is for you.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Radicalism that is fun - and works, February 23, 2005

By 

Bill Godfrey (Mt Stuart, TAS Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works (Hardcover)

Written with engaging enthusiasm and frankness, the 14 essays in this book have titles like 'Let the Followers Lead', 'Do it your Way - See if I Care', 'Too Much Talent is as Bad as Too Little'.

Collectively they demonstrate the enormous business success - over 20 years - of a philosophy, culture and practices that are totally radical in comparison with 'conventional' business.

Yet they are based on the commonsense principles of democracy, trust, transparency, a shared search for new opportunities and better ways of doing things, and guardianship by the community of a shared set of values, beliefs and principles.

In the process of explaining how these principles work in practice, Semler blows apart just about every piece of conventional wisdom underpinning the behaviour of large public companies - Semler's Semco remains privately owned. It is reasonable to question to what extent it could operate as it does if it were a public company - and whether it could be as successful as it is. Is the classic joint stock form becoming a 'dead hand', rather than a driver of progress?