The Seven-day Weekend
"Ricardo Semler's favorite question is "Why?" Why do people routinely bring work home on the weekends but never go to the movies on a Monday afternoon? Why do we need to sit at the same desk every day? Why do we have to fill out time sheets or need an HR department to file them? Why are we interviewed by our bosses but never get to interview someone who wants to be our boss?" "For the last twenty years Semler has been doing a lot more than asking questions - he's actually been running a company by breaking every tenet in the traditional rule book. Semler encourages his employees to play hooky. He tells them not to bother with growth plans. Employees choose their own salaries, set their own hours and have no job titles." "Reflecting Ricardo Semler's passion, wry sense of humor, and hardheaded business acumen, The Seven-Day Weekend challenges all of our assumptions about how a successful business should be run."--BOOK JACKET.
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- This may not help directly, but at least you'll get a couple of good reads out of it. See "Maverick! The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace" (1993) and "The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works" (2003) by Ricardo Semler.
Info about him is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler
Right now I'm going through 37 Signals books just for the fun of learning..."Getting Real" (2006), "Rework" (2010), "Remote" (2013), "It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work" (2018), "Shape Up" (2019). Might be something in there.
(I'm now retired, but still trying to figure out what the right way of living and working should have been. Luckily, I'm financially OK despite a lifetime of bumping into walls and dealing with shitheads at exactly every job I've ever had. At least I knew how to live frugally and save money, so I'm free now.)
- I am not an entrepreneur (yet) but I still want to share a few titles with you:
- "Maverick or The seven day weekend" by Ricardo Semler
- "Rework" by Jason Fried and David Hansson
- "Startup - an insider's guide to launching and running a business" by Kevin Ready
- "Bookkeeping and Cost Accounting for Factories" by William Kent (1918)
- "Practice what you preach" by David Maister
- "Don't oil the squeaky wheel" by Wolf Rinke
- "Selling The Wheel: Choosing The Best Way To Sell For You Your Company Your Customers" by Jeff Cox
- "The power of stupidity" by Giancarlo Livraghi
- "How to write a good advertisement" by Victor Schwab
- "How to Make Money Out of Thin Air" by Brian Sher
- "Good manners and business etiquette. Illustrated Guide" by Elena Ber
- "Don't just roll the dice: A usefully short guide to software pricing" by Neil Davidson
- "Message to Garcia" by Elbert Hubbard
- the TopLeaf course of 36 video lectures on management by dr. Izhak Adizes can be purchased on https://vimeo.com/ondemand/topleaf or found on ru tracker (if you have access)
- If you don't know about Ricardo Semler, he is a brazilian industrial leader, who has a company called Semco that runs on egalitarian principles.
https://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_company_with_almost_no_rules
His books "Maverick!", "The Seven-day Weekend" is full of examples and instances of why,how Semco functions the way it does.
It is a company which had stuff like profit sharing etc, and its run in democratic fashion where participation of employees is needed for many functions.
- I don't think there is any legislation to stop running a company in an inclusive way.
W.L.Gore and Associates of Gore-Tex fame are renowned for their organizational culture, for example (based on what I've read):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates
There are lots of different types of decisions made at companies. For example, Germany mandates a high level of employee influence at companies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
while remaining typically authoritarian in day to day activities (I've heard).
Non-democratic governance does not mean people could not be encouraged to participate and be creative. The book "Creativity Inc" by Ed Catmull ponders the problems of leadership and management at Pixar (namely, how they attempt to avoid all the stupid mistakes that are obvious in hindsight).
You might be interested int the "seven day weekend" by Ricardo Semler as well.
Human organizations are complex and difficult. I don't think you can legislate the pathologies away unless they are really obvious. But there are several companies already that include workers way better than not.
- I actually like the idea of a Holacracy, and you see it in alot of small startups intentionally or not. The generally tend to loose this as they grow. I recently read one of Ricardo Selmer's books on how he used Holacracy at Semco http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works-... which is a huge multi national company. I highly suggest it.
- Let me clarify: I totally do not think that this state of mind is a reality at banks - and probably not at many tech companies either. I truly abhor the fake "passion" demonstrations required in the typical corporate environment. They are one of the reasons why I hated my time there. It is a tragedy, a travesty of the good things humans can achieve through their work.
However, this concept is a reality in my life, and I am observing it in people other than me as well, at work. In no cases does it involve people "working round the clock" - though sometimes it does involve people thinking about work-related topics even when they're not at work. And it also involves them thinking about non-work things while at work. From time to time, people might choose to work late, but there's no external pressure to do so.
This philosophy is best explained in a book called "The Seven-day weekend" by Ricardo Semler of Semco fame. Note the emphasis of letting life take over and blur the lines from that "direction", rather than just trying to fool people into working longer hours, which is indeed a disgusting approach to business.
PS: I'm European. This notion of work being an evil biblical curse to be avoided is just as backwards as the american-style attempts to convince people to work all the time and "show passion".
PPS: That said, thank you for highlighting a way that my arguments in this matter can be misunderstood.
