Top 10 Myths About Democratic Management

An article by Christian Wandeler, Semco Style Institute USA The Great Resignation: How to Stop Losing Your Talent Companies across the globe, and particularly those in the US, are facing a great challenge: people are quitting their jobs or people are checking out. One...

An article by Eveline Hadewegg Scheffer, Semco Style Institute People’s behavior has fascinated me since I was young. I’ve always been curious about why people do what they do and what makes them click. At times, I find myself people-watching just out of curiosity. At...

An article by Rajesh Navaneetham, Semco Style Institute India What is Agile Culture and what are its essentials? Agile has clearly caught the world’s fancy, and in the last two decades its adoption has expanded beyond software. And for good reason. Companies are...

A take on what Agile takes: interview with Agile Coach Aslam Hirani In this interview, Aslam Hirani - a programmer-turned-agile coach - discusses his experiences as an agile coach. Drawing from his decade-long experience working with big names in the industry, he...

An article by Eveline Hadewegg Scheffer, Semco Style Institute New Year’s Resolutions As the new year begins, it’s time for some New Years Resolutions. At the beginning of 2021, we were hopeful that we could beat COVID, and everything could return to normal, or at...

Living Room ConversationAll Things Semco Style   The living room is where we share, support and reminisce together and that’s exactly what the co-founders of Semco Style Institute did in a recent episode of Living Room Conversations. These...

Personal blog article written by SSI colleague Eveline Hadewegg SchefferBack in February 2020, I responded with great enthusiasm to a vacancy at Semco Style Institute (SSI) for the role of a consultant. Having already followed the ‘Semco Expert’ program, I knew that I...

Work Life with Adam Grant Why it Pays to Raise Pay   Pay is not a carrot you dangle to motivate people. It's a symbol of how much you value them. Come inside a Seattle startup that set a minimum salary of $70,000 and a Brazilian company that let people set their...

Agile - the very word has a lilt to it, doesn’t it? It makes you think of something that’s light, nimble and unfettered. Like the little flower in the grass, the dandelion’s fluffy white sphere, which takes off with the lightest breeze to proliferate everywhere, agile...

Self-management is a principle that we believe is the fundamental requirement for empowering both people and organizational success in today’s unprecedented times, as well as in our future economy. Self-management is a hot topic at the moment, and often pops up in...

Arguably the most used phrase on video calls in recent times is “you are on mute,” often accompanied by “we cannot see you” or “your video is off!” Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies moved to a remote work or work from home policy. Depending on...

Semco Style practically equips leaders with a framework to lead, manage and inspire distributed teams and create an employee friendly culture characterized by psychological safety.   In our recent article Psychological Safety: Leading remote teams in a distributed...

Remote Teams And Psychological Safety The notion of distributed teams and its related challenges has long been part of the multi-site and multi-national corporate organization. It is however with the world-wide outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, that many traditional...

How do you organize your organization in the 6 ft. economy? Irrespective of the long-term vision organizations have on working from home, we all have to face challenges, in the short-term, working as well as possible without physical contact. One thing, however, is...

How do you stay confident and in control in the 6 ft. Organization? The 6 ft. economy requires different ways of organizing. For the foreseeable future, offices will be set up differently and remote working will remain necessary. In fact, it may even become the new...

In the "old" hierarchical situation, all information and ultimate responsibility was with managers. Whether it was delegating work or chasing a project themselves, the manager was always "in charge". In order to move away from that, you need to place more trust and...

How does an organization become more adaptive to change? For, change happens all the time and the pace at which it takes place is increasing every year too. So, in order to thrive, and not just survive, we must become more responsive to change. The disruptive mindset...

What are we learning from this pandemic? Whether we like it or not - and, more importantly, whether we're ready for it or not - the world is now working in ways that strikingly resemble what Ricardo Semler proposed in his bestseller, “The 7-Day Weekend”. Sure, most of...

Working from home is gaining more traction now than ever before and that means the internet is full of “helpful tips on the best ways to work from home”. Although it’s already become a part of business operations for multiple companies around the world, working from...

We are in economically exceptional times. What seemed like a stable environment, last month, is now suddenly in doubt. Uncertain times and situations like these require far-reaching decisions. But, how do you deal with such a situation and ensure that the decisions...

It’s no secret that middle managers in large companies are powerless in many ways. Very often, their role is restricted to providing recommendations to the upper management and they have no say in the final decision-making process. High-impact decisions like who gets...

If you’re a middle manager, it’s not surprising if the phrase “Operational Review Meeting”(ORM) fills you with dread. While they are slowly being phased out in many companies, these meetings continue to exist in conventional enterprises as a way for the upper...

Being a new employee is like being a new college student. Like in college, a new employee not only has the actual work to tackle but also has to learn about a new work environment; the people who are going to affect their work life; the rules of engagement and the...

Walls in the office are one of the most dogged hangovers of management that silently reinforce workplace inequalities. They are invisible silos that separate people into those who make decisions and those who execute those decisions. While it seems innocuous, think of...

Organizations often struggle to fulfill the career aspirations of internal talent, even though considerable efforts, cost and time are spent on finding the right talent to fill a role when someone leaves or a new one opens up. It’s also not new to source talent from...

In organizations that want to become more self-organized,and less hierarchical, the quality of their teams is a key element of success. But, how do you build a solid team? How do you create a team that is able to take its own decisions and act autonomously?In this...

Honestly, who doesn’t love the title, “Technical Specialist”? It oozes authority and makes you feel like you’re in safe hands. For, a specialist has the perfect solution to your extremely particular problem. And, they make any team seem a little more sophisticated...

Great ideas are how companies keep innovating and staying relevant. We are now past the school of thought where employees were expected to only be seen and not heard. The C-suite is no longer the sole gatekeeper of ideas that can make the business better. Pioneered by...

In organizations that want to become more self-organized,and less hierarchical, the quality of their teams is a key element of success. But, how do you build a solid team? How do you create a team that is able to take its own decisions and act autonomously?In this...

Meetings are the bane of any corporate structure. Necessary for the company to function, but haphazardly executed, it is a corporate tool that everyone loves to hate. Yet, it is also a tool that is badly misunderstood. As with any tool, meetings can be effective if...

There are many misconceptions about self-management - but the one that’s quite persistent is that there is no structure and that there are no leaders in these organizations. However, that’s far from the ground reality. Organizations that choose the self-management...

Companies, like people, need to come with their own ethics - but it’s more important for them to follow through with them. When a company lives and breathes what it preaches, it not only encourages their employees to be a part of the ethical culture but also creates a...

When an organization moves from being a traditional hierarchy into self-management, it’s a moment of great flux for managers: There isn’t enough clarity on what exactly their role is within this new agile environment. As people who are used to being in-charge of all...

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are to organizations, what performance reviews are to employees: They acknowledge the status quo and help track progress. Important as indicators, KPIs provide insight into aspects of the company, like profit and loss or product...

‘Make Work Awesome’ is a monthly series of free webinars that aims to offer inspiration, tips and the latest innovations to help you make work more awesome. On this page you find a recording of the webinar with Heiko Fischer. Arko van Brakel and Heiko deep-dived into...

What does it mean when a company needs to be true to itself? Similar to individuals, companies also have personalities. This “personality” is known as the company culture. Company culture has been one of the most scrutinized aspects of corporate affairs in the recent...

Basic economics suggest that employees respond to financial incentives. However, not all financial incentives are created the same. Usually doled out on the basis of merit or hierarchy, incentives like bonuses or commissions can be deceptive in the ways they reward....

Agile or self-steering teams are no longer restricted just to the realm of software or IT: Instead, it’s a new management mindset that’s finding more takers and believers every day. However, there’s a huge void between aspiring to become agile and actually being agile...

This first article briefly explains all five questions; the following articles aim to provide you with a more detailed analysis of the questions as well as helpful guidance on how to address them. 1. What is the maturity of the team? Self-organizing teams can no...

The secrecy that surrounds what employees of an organization get paid is legendary in its power to create disengagement. In fact, a PayScale survey of over 71,000 employees proved to be quite eye-opening about the effect pay secrecy has on employee engagement. A...

Dilemma conversations are something I’ve been facilitating (along with a colleague, at times) for small groups of managers or people who belong to regular teams. Done in three rounds, over the course of a month, the dilemma conversation is essentially a Socratic...

The Seven-Day Weekend gives us an inside perspective into Semler’s psyche. I see similarities with CEOs that I have interviewed. Just like Semler, they focus on happiness in their organization. “People that are happy at work have IQ plus EQ plus SQ minus ego,” Semler...

Last year this time, I was going through a personal crisis and my decision to take up the Semco Style Institute training gave me a language with which to express what I already knew to be true. When I began my training in September, 2016, my wife, Christine, was...

On the occasion of the launch of the new Semco Style website, Ricardo Semler explains why it was time to found the Semco Style Institute. "There are a lot of new insights, and there are a lot of new ways of doing things, running away from the clichés and really...

What if your job didn’t control your life? Brazilian CEO Ricardo Semler practices a radical form of corporate democracy, rethinking everything from board meetings to how workers report their vacation days (they don’t have to). It’s a vision that rewards the wisdom of...

Friday jun 10, Semco Style Institute proudly celebrated the certification of the first group of Semco Style Consultants in Driebergen. An important and historic moment for the Semco Style Institute. We congratulate all consultants with this beautiful result and wish...

The management style that Ricardo Semler evolved through decades of experimentation at Brazilian firm Semco proved to be massively successful. The company defied gravity with the rate of its growth, even when the rest of the country was suffering savage recession. And...

TED talk by Ricardo Semler What if your job didn’t control your life? Brazilian CEO Ricardo Semler practices a radical form of corporate democracy, rethinking everything from board meetings to how workers report their vacation days (they don’t have to). It’s a vision...

This case won the Human Resource Management/Organisational Behaviour category at The Case Centre Awards and Competitions 2016. The case Who – the protagonistsRicardo Semler, the reluctant successor to his father’s multinational company, Semco. WhatSemco comprises a...

He's the CEO and majority owner of Semco Partners, a Brazilian company best known for its radical form of industrial democracy. Under his ownership, revenue has grown from 4 million US dollars in 1982 to 212 million US dollars in 2003. His innovative business...

A full interview with Ricardo Semler by the Dutch TV-show "Tegenlicht". In the episode 'The capital power of hapiness' a portret of this Brasilian business man was made. Here you can watch the full interview of one hour and a half. Mostly unedited, but divided in...

Through his unique leadership style, Ricardo Semler, President & CEO of Semco S.A., a Brazilian manufacturing company, has literally redefined the concept of employee empowered leadership. At 20, the youngest graduate of the Harvard Business School, Semler is...