Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 11.4
Ricardo Semler and the Semco way
Semco has no official structure. It has no organizational chart. There's no business
plan or company strategy, no two-year or five-year plan, no goal or mission statement,
no long-term budget. The company often does not have a fixed CEO. There are no
vice-presidents or chief officers for information technology or operations. There are
no standards or practices. There's no human resources department. There are no
career plans, no job descriptions or employee contracts. No one approves reports
or expense accounts. Supervision or monitoring of workers is rare indeed.
It's our lack of formal structure, our willingness to let workers follow their interests
and their instincts when choosing jobs or projects.
It's our insistence that workers seek personal challenges and satisfaction before
trying to meet the company's goals.
It's our commitment to encouraging employees to ramble through their day or
week so that they will meander into new ideas and new business opportunities.
It's our philosophy of embracing democracy and open communication, and inciting
questions and dissent in the workplace.
Even though our workers can veto a deal or close a factory with a show of hands,
Semco grows by an average of 40 per cent a year and has annual revenue of more
than US$212 million.
We need to first walk through the seven-day weekend that is the metaphor for
the Semco way. . . . It's about creating an atmosphere and culture that grants
permission to employees to be men and women in full for seven days a week. Why
should the fun, fulfillment and freedom stop first thing Monday morning and be on
hold until Friday night? . . . I believe no one can afford, can 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.
Source: adapted from Semler (2004).
touch - indeed, all of the five senses. Mind changing will also encompass, in one
form or another, one or a combination of the following:
•
the use of reason, analysis and evaluation;
•
the collection of relevant information in one or more forms;
•
the appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect;
•
the redescription or representation of a particular state of affairs or viewpoint
in different ways - linguistic, numeric, graphic - recognizing the significance of
people's multiple intelligences;
•
encouragement, enticement or motivation to change;
•
the impact of real-world events or, to put it simply, life; and
•
personal, social or cultural resistance to change or difference.
For Gardner, an intelligence is the biophysical potential enabling people to process
information in certain kinds of ways, and people have many of them. He first out-
lined his theory that human beings possess multiple intelligences in his
Frames of
