7 takeaways from «Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace»
How do you save a huge company from bankruptcy?
This book is not so much about a successful company as it is about the person who made it so. Yes, we are talking about Ricardo Semler, owner of Semco and author of «Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace».
Ricardo was from a wealthy family and inherited the plant, but he was able to save it from bankruptcy through transparency, simplification, and a democratic approach. How? Here are my 7 main takeaways from the book.
Get yourself a cup of tea or coffee, this'll be interesting!
1. A twenty-page book as a guide to action instead of a pile of papers
No one wants to read a huge pile of monotonous text, especially if we're talking about a manual for work. Even if the employee tells you that he has read everything, he most likely did not read it carefully or did not open anything at all. Ricardo Semler realized this and did the following:
He compressed all the information to 20 pages, made it as clear as possible for employees, and even added pictures. It turned out that reading the manual was not only not boring, but even interesting!
2. Employees evaluate their boss, and the evaluations are made public
Imagine that in a huge factory, the workers choose their own boss. Utopia?
In Semco, everything is arranged this way: once in a certain amount of time, each engineer fills out an anonymous questionnaire of 30 questions. If, according to the final results, the boss scores less than 70% of the rating, he either moves to another department and changes his approach to work or leaves.
If you are a business owner and have hired employees, you can do something similar. Feedback and dialogue with employees are very important; try this!
3. Building trust through the right approach with employees
Semco's management did this: they replaced the screening of employees after the shift with a sign. It has this inscription:
Please make sure you don't take anything extra that doesn't belong to you.
It's hard to imagine that, right? But do you think Brazilians began stealing more? The correct answer is no; they didn't.
If you want the trust of your employees, trust them yourself.
4. A different attitude toward papers and paper bureaucracy
Once the founder of the company, Ricardo Semler, discovered that 6 huge cabinets in the office were crammed with piles of accounting papers from top to bottom, he took each thick folder and asked himself: