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The Seven-Day Weekend QUOTES

The Seven-Day Weekend QUOTES

1 " Profits must be judged as moral or immoral by how they are earned and how they are disposed. Without a new barometer, we are left with the old barometer—profit for its own sake, regardless of whether it is sustainable or ultimately ruinous. But over the course of a seven-day weekend when a reservoir of talent is tapped, a calling is found, a true, well-rounded definition of success is established, people may realize they’re working not for the money but literally working for and on themselves. And what a liberating realization that is. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

2 " One good question and one good answer are services to all. A sure sign of a troubled company is one where employees don’t care enough to ask and, if that’s the case, they’ll never care enough to fully deploy their talent. Just as curiosity is an antidote to boredom and indifference, the informed are more likely to remain interested, engaged, and alive with purpose. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

3 " The acting CEO cannot be blamed or credited for the company’s performance, and that makes the system independent of the CEO. Blame or credit falls on each manager and employee. The CEO should be the quarterback, not God. In a sense, it makes us like Switzerland, where many citizens have a hard time remembering their President’s name. Solidarity comes as a consequence of collective action, and not from one personality. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

4 " On two occasions, the person I had chosen as airplane captain came through as environmental leader in this second exercise. These exercises reinforced my belief that leadership indeed depends on the situation. As circumstances change, leadership must change. A certain set of skills, instincts, and personality traits may be perfect today, but useless tomorrow. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

5 " Exchanging the old boss for a new boss is not situational leadership. True situational leadership—flexible, effective, evolutionary—can only arise from self-management. And that means that situational leadership doesn’t change fundamentally with circumstances. It is always about giving up control. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

6 " Even so, these symbols still cause quite a fuss. Thirty percent of all issues in organizations are what I call boarding school stuff: rewards and punishments, how to dress, what time to show up, how to address superiors, how to behave properly. Even worse, they include fodder for the “green-eyed monster,” jealousy, things like why somebody got a raise and somebody else didn’t, why she got the better client account, or why he was asked to join the board. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

7 " At Semco, you are what you do, not what or whom you control. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

8 " The stress-free workplace that is most productive is the one where workers respect each other’s differences. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

9 " Intuition, luck, mistakes, serendipity—there you have four vital business concepts that every manager should know. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

10 " But uncontrolled variables are what make dreams come true. If we change the way work works we can live the dream of work-life balance and sustainability. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

11 " Now Semco employees are free to customize their workdays, to come in earlier or later than traditional schedules. The hours they work are determined by their self-interest, not by company dictates. They’re the best judges of the amount of time and the proper place necessary to get their job done. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

12 " The second error is the assumption that business or the work environment is the only tribal affiliation people have. By sheer proximity, the workplace tribe may seem to dwarf all the others, but anyone who works at home will find they actually belong to four or five major tribes—starting with the family and extending outward to the neighborhood, the garden club, library volunteers, church, and the like. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

13 " Companies hoping to recruit the best and the brightest must demonstrate that they trust their employees with the freedom to work anywhere. They must assume that they’re buying talent and dedication, not what the Brazilians call “butt-on-chair time. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

14 " A neighbor of mine in Sao Paulo built a house that reminds me of a South American dictator’s compound. He may have spent his entire allotment of $12 million on the house. But now his problem is Leonardo, who points out that a human cannot possibly feel at ease in such a disproportionate house. Certainly my neighbor can live there, open it to photographers from design magazines, and be admired from afar. But in winter he’ll huddle in the tiny TV room on the second floor, withdrawing from the cavernous rooms to seek a more human scale. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

15 " Having discovered that a lot of effort has to be put in by Semco into deprogramming adults, we at the Semco Foundation started an Institute for Advanced Learning called Lumiar (Portuguese for “to shed light on”) and a school for children. It is based on the same tenets as Semco—freedom, self-determination and self-discipline, passion and love. This may sound woodstockish or summerhillian but its goal is the utmost of practicality and excellence: to effectively teach some of the accumulated knowledge of humankind to free-thinking children. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

16 " What lubricates the process for us is faith—faith supported by experience—that employees can pursue their self-interest and fulfill the company’s agenda at the same time. If there’s a match or alignment between what we want and what they want, the results will be twofold: While they’re busy satisfying themselves, they’ll satisfy the company’s objectives, too. They succeed, we succeed. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

17 " The lack of challenge, meaning, and purpose would be suffocating. Human beings thrive on being productive, on working toward goals, on providing for their families, on building a future—just don’t ask them to do it all the time and without the freedom to say, “Now, I need time for me. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

18 " Moving around limits tribal affiliations that are detrimental to democracy, communication, and innovation. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

19 " Arguably, Semco’s most controversial initiative is to let its employees set their own salaries. Pundits are quick to bring up their dim view of human nature, on the assumption that people will obviously set their salaries much higher than feasible. It’s the same argument we hear about people setting their own work schedules in a seven-day weekend mode. The first thing that leaps to mind is that people will come as late or little as possible—and this has never been our experience. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend

20 " Moreover, in my view, obtrusive and intrusive leadership becomes counterproductive by interfering with the free interplay of individual talent and interest. "

― Ricardo Semler , The Seven-Day Weekend