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The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works

Ricardo Semler · 4 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works" by Ricardo Semler.
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Amazon Summary
Ricardo Semler thinks that companies ought to put employee freedom and satisfaction ahead of corporate goals. Imagine a company where employees set their own hours; where there are no offices, no job titles, no business plans; where employees get to endorse or veto any new venture; where kids are encouraged to run the halls; and where the CEO lets other people make nearly all the decisions. This company—Semco—actually exists, and despite a seeming recipe for chaos, its revenues have grown from $35 million to $160 million in the last six years. It has virtually no staff turnover, and there are no signs that its growth will stop any time soon. How did Semco become wildly successful despite breaking many of the commonly accepted laws of business? In The Seven-Day Weekend, Ricardo Semler shows that for those willing to take a chance, there is a better way to run a workplace. He explains how the technology that was supposed to make life easier—laptops, cell phones, e-mail, pagers—has in fact stolen free time and destroyed the traditional nine-to-five workday. But this can be a good thing—if you have the freedom to get your job done on your own terms and to blend your work life and personal life with enthusiasm and creative energy. Smart bosses will eventually realize that you might be most productive if you work on Sunday afternoon, play golf on Monday morning, go to a movie on Tuesday afternoon, and watch your child play soccer on Thursday. This is a radical book that will challenge the business world to make the seven-day weekend a reality.
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Holacracy seems to be taking some good ideas and packaging them with strange ideas, like saying that people should not talk about personal topics at work.

What about the Brazilian engineering firm Semco? Follows a non-hierarchical, self-organizing structure. Thousands of employees, very successful. Described in two books by CEO Ricardo Semler: The Seven-Day Weekend and Maverick. http://www.amazon.com/The-Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Works/d...

⬐ vasilipupkin
One anecdote is not data and neither is multiple anecdotes Nobody would claim that you cannot have one successful company without managers. The question is, if you switch your company to this model, will it be more successful. Unlikely, in my opinion.
⬐ simonebrunozzi
He recently gave a very inspiring TED talk. That's how I've got to know about Semco. http://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_radical_wisdom_for_a...
Holacracy is an instance of organizational democracy, but it's not new - I took a holacracy seminar 6 years ago. Kudos to Medium for using the framework though - it's one of the few that lays out, soup to nuts, how to run a democratic company.

There are many companies that operate using democracy as an organizing principle - Semco is the great-granddaddy of them all (two books - Maverick[1] and the 7 Day Weekend[2] - were written by Semco's founder, Ricardo Semler, about how Semco operates).

Other well-known democratically-run companies include Zappos, WL Gore, DaVita (a $12B company), and Dreamhost.

If you're interested, take a look at WorldBlu[3] for more - they've been building a community of these kinds of companies, have tons of resources on their site, and even have a conference on organizational democracy.

[1] - http://www.amazon.com/The-Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Works/d...

[2] - http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0446670553

[3] - http://worldblu.com/

Let my people go surfing -- Yvon Chouinard

http://amzn.com/1594200726

The seven day weekend -- Ricardo Semler

http://amzn.com/1591840260

Getting Real

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/

--

Also, help flesh out the list of books for startups I just created for HN on my site:

http://www.stormweight.com/lists/books-for-startups?p=OyAXcZ

The best business book I've ever read is The Seven Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler. I was turned onto Semler after Jason Fried recommended the book on one of 37signals live sessions.

http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Day-Weekend-Changing-Work-Works/...

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