Ricardo Semler Quotes

The key to management is to get rid of the managers.

Human nature demands recognition. Without it, people lose their sense of purpose and become dissatisfied, restless, and unproductive.

The era of using people as production tools is coming to an end. Participation is infinitely more complex to practice than conventional corporate unilateralism, just as democracy is much more cumbersome than dictatorship. But there will be few companies that can afford to ignore either of them.

If you are giving back, you took too much.

I believe no one can afford, endure or can stomach leaving half a life in the parking lot when she or he goes to work. It's a lousy way to live and a lousy way to work.

There are companies which are prepared to change the way they work. They realize that nothing can be based on what used to be, that there is a better way. But, 99 percent of companies are not ready, [they are] caught in an industrial Jurassic Park.

For a company to excel, employees must be reassured that self-interest, not the company's, is their foremost priority. We believe an employee who puts himself first will be motivated to perform.

people spend less time in the office and have more time to themselves. Their need to belong to a tribe can be satisfied with hobbies or in community activities and doesn't have to be met in the office.

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.

If we do not let people do things the way they do, we will never know what they are really capable of and they will just follow our boarding school rules.

Forget socialism, capitalism, just-in-time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest ... concentrate on building organizations that accomplish that most difficult of all challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning.

We have absolute trust in our employees. In fact, we are partners with them.

Growth and profit are a product of how people work together.

People are too keen to follow standard preconceptions of how organisations should work. All too often, we feel that we are unable to make changes and so hope that someone, somewhere in your organisation knows what we are doing and what the overall aim is.

The best way to invest corporate profits is to give them to the employees.

A high percentage of organisations develop a military rationale, whereby only a very small number of people make all of the decisions. There is little wonder, then, that people aren't keen to get out of bed and come to work on a Monday morning.

Only two things grow for the sake of growth: businesses and tumors.

Bill Gore from Goretex was a very strong influence because he was one of the first larger companies to experiment with freedom in the workplace.

If you look at any kind of modern organization and you think, 'What are the foremost tools of power?' You will find that it is information.

I once worked it out - after $12 million, all millionaires are the same. That's because we're all humans, confined to human scale. How many homes can you live in? How many meals can you eat? You can have a living room the size of a cathedral, but you won't live in it. It's too big.

One of the things that is very silly - and I hear from educators all the time - is that schools essentially teach kids to learn. They don't need school for that. Learning is what they do best.

Every one of us has learned how to send emails on Sunday night. But how many of us know how to go a movie on Monday afternoon. You've unbalanced your life without balancing it with someone else.

People are responsible adults at home. Why do we suddenly transform them into adolescents with no freedom when they reach the workplace?

Large, centralized organizations foster alienation like stagnant ponds breed algae.