The Seven-day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works

“If you are giving back, it’s because you’ve taken too much.” – Ricardo Semler

Ricardo Semler is the former CEO of Semco Partners, a Brazilian company very well known for its absolute form of industrial democracy and corporate re-engineering. He is the best-selling author of "The Seven-Day Weekend": A Better Way to Work in the 21st Century

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.

Semco's revenue has 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 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.

Semler also explains in this book how he transformed a small family business into a highly profitable manufacturing, services and high-tech powerhouse - 40 times larger - while watching his favorite movies or relaxing with his son in the middle of the business day.

10 Key takeaways in this book.

1. Ask why. Ask it all the time and always ask it 3 times in a row.

2. People believe that the opposite of work is leisure but it isn't - it's idleness. Work is activity so idleness is inactivity. Find some idle time for yourself.

3. Technology permits work to seep increasingly into the gaps between weekend activities. Make an deliberate effort to push it away.

4. If an employee has no interest in a product or project then that venture will never succeed. It's better to find this out sooner than later.

5. Find your companies common denominators - values that are close to everyone - and stick to them. You cannot impose these. You have to find out what they are. Shared values are those that evolve naturally over time until one day you realize you live by them.

6. Promote diversity. Mix people of different backgrounds, experiences and ages to avoid silos mentality and to spur innovation.

7. Persistence is a singular quality of entrepreneurs. One cannot expect executives to have the broad sense of balance they need and still be obsessive. Choose passion over balance.

8. To execute cutting-edge ideas you must be open to working with unortodox people.

9. Let your employees outvote your ideas.

10. Educators now simply perpetuate a system that produces marginal gains for students because changing that system would canibalize their knowledge. Do not expect cutting-edge stuff to come from schools.

Praise for The Seven-Day Weekend'Are there real-life lessons to be learned? The answer is yes-Pragmatic, inspirational and intriguing advice' The Times'Ricardo Semler is our kind of capitalist.' Guardian'In this book, Ricardo Semler tells how Semco, Latin America's fastest growing company, uses a revolutionary way of working to run a profit making company with a work force who love their jobs.'

The Seven-Day Weekend challenges conventional approaches to work. It sparks ideas that can be applied to one's own business [and] will certainly encourage managers to look very carefully at their management practices.'