Book Excerpt: The Seven-Day Weekend

That was April of 1993. A year later, the Semco Cushman & Wakefield joint venture employed 150 people and did $4 million in business. Today, it employs 1,300 people and has gross revenues of more than $65 million.

Why am I telling you this story, much less starting a book with it? For one thing, you couldn't concoct a more outrageous and unlikely combination. Staid, proper, blue-blooded Cushman & Wakefield united with casual, off-the-wall, planning averse, nearly anything goes Semco. Talk about an odd couple! But I contend the strangeness is its strength. There's resiliency, flexibility, and sustainability to the venture that would be lacking in a more conventional pairing.

Even so, my purpose is much more subversive than merely recounting an unlikely success story. I believe the old way of doing business is dying, and the sooner it's dead and buried the better off we all will be. Incendiary words, yet Semco's alliance with Cushman & Wakefield, as well as other joint ventures that I will describe shortly, suggests that the transition from the old to the new can be hugely profitable and not nearly as socially disruptive as might be feared at first. On the contrary, the path Semco has been blazing for more than twenty years has led to an unprecedented record of innovation, customer satisfaction, growth, and an end to repressive command-and-control management practices that cause much labor unrest and personal misery, from the top to the bottom of many organizations.

One of the recurring themes of this book is the need--the absolute necessity--to give up control in order to cope with changes that are transforming the way we live and work. As counterintuitive as that sounds, it does not contradict the experience and values at the core of free market, democratic capitalism. I don't want to speak for Arthur Mirante, who is indeed an excellent friend and wonderful partner, but it seems to me that something in my casual, drive-by approach appealed to his entrepreneurial instincts. He was willing to take a chance--to give up control. Isn't that what entrepreneurs do? They're flexible, intuitive, nondogmatic; they take risks, make money, and have fun.

But many entrepreneurs--be they leaders of great or small enterprises--can't bring themselves to let go. They probably would have shown me the door, and turned away from a $65 million venture. I believe the obsession with control is a delusion and, increasingly, a fatal business error. The more we grab for it, the more it slips away, and ever more desperate measures are applied, spawning Enrons, WorldComs, and hosts of lower profile disasters. As the control mechanism grows harsher and harsher, what's lost is the central purpose of the business, any business--a satisfying, worthwhile life for those involved and a reasonable reward for their investment and hard work. The seven-day weekend is Semco's way of getting out of the control business and back to our central purpose.

SHAPING SEMCO

Nearly twenty years ago a prominent Brazilian politician invited me to the far north of Brazil for a conference. Senator Jose Macedo, a wonderful self-made man, had begun his working life as a soap salesman. By the time I met him, he was a billionaire in the flour, biscuit, beer, and car dealership businesses.

I spoke at the conference for an hour about Semco and its unusual practices, and then Senator Macedo opened the question-and-answer session. Sitting in the first row, he looked back over his shoulder at the hundreds of people who filled the hot, humid auditorium and asked, "Mr. Semler, before answering other questions, can you please tell us what planet you're from?" It took several minutes for the room to quiet down, and I can still hear the good-natured laughter.

In case you're tempted to ask the same question after reading a few more pages of this book, I suggest that we first pursue another line of inquiry that might prove more helpful and less inflammatory. The question that I have in mind is, what is Semco?

The only problem is that now I have to come up with an answer. If you ask me to describe it in conventional business terms, I'd have to admit I have no idea what business Semco is in. For years, I have resisted defining Semco for a simple reason: Once you say what business you're in, you create boundaries for your employees, you restrict their thinking and give them a reason to ignore new opportunities. "We're not in that business," they'll say.

Instead of dictating Semco's identity, I let our employees shape it with their individual efforts, interests, and initiatives.

You probably don't like my answer, and I don't blame you. I'll try again from another angle. Instead of explaining what Semco does, I'll take a run at what it doesn't do.

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.

Most important, success is not measured only in profit and growth.

Strange, eh? My summary may make Semco sound like a company with an offbeat management style that wouldn't succeed anywhere else. Nevertheless, hundreds of corporate leaders from around the world have visited Sao Paulo to find out what makes us tick. The visitors are curious about Semco because they want what we have--huge growth in spite of a fluctuating economy, unique market niches, rising profits, highly motivated employees, low turnover, diverse products, and service areas.

Our visitors want to understand how Semco has increased its annual revenue between 1994 and 2003 from $35 million a year to $212 million when I--the company's largest shareholder--rarely attend meetings and almost never make decisions. They want to know how my employees, with a show of hands, can veto new product ideas or scrap whole business ventures.

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