Who Moved My Weekend?

The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works
by Ricardo Semler

A maverick CEO debunks the conventional wisdom about work by putting employee freedom and satisfaction ahead of corporate goals.

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.

Chapter 1

"Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits."
— SATCHEL PAIGE

NEVER MIND THE CHEESE - who moved my weekend?

I'm serious. Where did it go? One minute Saturday and Sunday formed an oasis for rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation. The next thing we know the cell phone is ringing, e-mail is piling up, and the fax machine is vomiting paper onto the floor. Paradise lost. Welcome to the seven-day workweek.

I've got a much better idea, though, one that I've been road testing now for many years: the seven-day weekend. If the workweek is going to slop over into the weekend - and there's no hope of stopping that from happening - why can't the weekend, with its precious restorative moments of playtime, my time, and our time, spill over into the workweek?

It can and, I believe, must happen. In fact, the seven-day weekend is already happening at Semco, an unusual company that I'll introduce you to in the pages ahead. What you are about to read is a combination of a political manifesto, a business case history, and an anthropological study. Before you shudder, groan, and heave the book across the room, I'll hasten to add that it's also a road map to personal and business success. We have to find a better way for work to work. The seven-day workweek is shaping up as a personal, societal, and business disaster. It robs people of passion and pleasure, destroys family and community stability, and sets up business organizations to ultimately fail once they've burned out their employees and burned through ever more manipulative and oppressive strategies.

The seven-day weekend approach is an alternative that bridges the gap between the airy theories of workplace democracy and the nitty-gritty practice of running a profitable business. I warn you, it's messy, inefficient, and hugely rewarding. I've chosen the metaphor of the seven-day weekend as an anchor. You're welcome to take the turn of phrase literally or figuratively. But don't kid yourself: I'm not talking about abolishing work. A seven-day weekend, however pleasant a fantasy of endless strolls on the beach, will mix work time with personal time in new and possibly disconcerting ways. Don't worry, though - it also doesn't imply that you'll be forever tethered to your laptop. Your first reaction may be dismay at the loss of your conventional weekend; after all, we naïvely define weekends as free time, personal days, idleness. But that definition is outdated. The traditional weekend and workweeks ended long ago. This book faces that fact and explores ways of making work more fun, and of finding a balance between work and private passions, so both can be significantly gratifying.

To do that, we must reorganize the workplace, both physically and culturally. At Semco, we've spent twenty-five years doing just that, primarily by constantly questioning the way we do things. When we started, everyone said we wouldn't last. Now Semco employs three thousand people working in three countries in manufacturing, professional services, and high-tech software. But even now, I continue to hear that our experiments could never work anywhere else. Yet we go on proving that in redistributing the weekend across the workweek, our employees find balance and Semco makes money. In that regard alone, we are an excellent business case study. We fit neatly into any MBA examination of success.

It's very simple - the repetition, boredom, and aggravation that too many people accept as an inherent part of working can be replaced with joy, inspiration, and freedom.

That's what I wish for everyone who reads this book.

Ricardo Semler

(Lying in a hammock with a laptop and my little boy, having fed the ducks at a nearby pond)
On a Monday in May

ONE

Any Day

• Ask why?
• Give up control.
• Change the way work works.

I'M A CATALYST, AND that's why I was on a ten-hour Varig flight from Sao Paulo to New York, fastening my seat belt and making sure the tray table was in an upright and locked position for landing.

You read that correctly the first time - catalyst. By definition a catalyst, usually an enzyme, initiates a reaction. The way I handle the role is by broaching weird ideas and asking dumb questions. Strictly speaking, I'm a highly evolved CEO, as in "Chief Enzyme Officer." As such, I was fated to make the trip the moment I casually said to my Semco colleagues, "I bet we can get the phone number of the Rockefeller Group by calling information. It must be listed, don't you think?" It was. Like a good enzyme, I even offered to dial the number, too, since I was perched on the front edge of my desk, a favorite spot that allows me to get to my feet quickly to end meetings that start to drag.

"Oh, Mr. Mirante, you mean," the company operator said when I blandly asked the name of Cushman & Wakefield's president, pretending that I had just suffered a slight memory lapse.

"Yes, Mr. Mirante. Would you ring his office please?" Cushman & Wakefield is the commercial real estate arm of the Rockefeller Group. When Arthur Mirante's secretary picked up the phone, I told her that I was calling from Brazil. For some reason that worked magic - maybe she had a secret fantasy about attending Carnival in Rio - the next thing I knew President Mirante himself was on the line.

It took about three minutes; record time, considering he didn't have a clue about me or my agenda. I explained who I was - leaving out the bit about being a catalyst - and suggested that we get together face-to-face to discuss a business proposition. My new friend, Arthur, agreed without pressing for details.

Now, standing in the cab rank at JFK Airport, having been stranded by a no-show limo driver, I experienced my latest pang of misgivings: "Cushman & Wakefield is going to agree to partner with an obscure Brazilian company? Get serious, Ricardo. This is one weird idea that's about to fizzle."

A cacophony of Indian sitar music provided the sound track for my trip through Queens to midtown Manhattan. I asked the cabbie to turn it down, but he couldn't hear me over the noise. Ears ringing, I got out on Fifth Avenue, wended my way past the famous ice-skating rink (in springtime hibernation), noted the façade of Radio City Music Hall with its flashy neon marquee, and entered the high-rise domain of one of the world's largest real estate management firms.

I whisked through the revolving door and sailed straight past the security desk without stopping, affecting the bearing of a Rockefeller scion (Rocky Ricardo?), a little game I used to play prior to 9/11. I was pretty good at looking like I knew where I was going; guards rarely stopped me for ID or destination checks. (Alas, those days are over in the United States.) The elevator ride to the thirty-sixth floor gave me just enough time to review my predicament without triggering full-fledged qualms. Surrounded by hundreds of engineers, brokers, and high-end property managers, I was about to propose that Semco, a company with zero experience in real estate, join forces with the Rockefeller family to handle the nitty-gritty business of facility management in Brazil and the rest of Latin America.

I introduced myself to the receptionist and moments later was sitting on an opulent silk-covered sofa wondering if I had been wise to wear jeans and a blazer. The doubts about my attire were almost instantly reinforced when into the office suite strode Arthur Mirante II, tall and stylishly draped in an elegant, Italian-designer suit that reeked of many fittings by cadres of attentive artisans.

His firm handshake and warm, open smile put me at ease. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be having fun and so, presumably, was he. I noticed that he gave my jeans a quick sideways glance of appraisal. We bantered a few moments about not usually setting up meetings based on a three-minute phone call, or flying ten hours on the same flimsy pretext, and then quickly got down to business. I summarized my proposal, emphasizing Semco's background in manufacturing and maintenance, but Mirante looked disappointed.

"I'm sorry you came all the way for this, then," he said. "The problem is we don't make much money in that business. It mainly supports our other real estate interests."

I countered that I was confident we could make a business out of it in Brazil. Mirante asked if I really wouldn't be more interested in the brokerage business. I confessed that my knowledge of real estate started and ended with buying my home.

With that the executive shrugged and took me to see his facility management people. Afterward, I suggested that each of us put up $2,000 to cover the legal expenses of establishing the venture. We'd be fifty-fifty partners. Arthur agreed, we shook hands, and off I went in a hurry to pick up tickets to the New York Philharmonic, have lunch with the writer Peter Carey, and hit the legendary Strand bookstore for three hours of browsing their stock of used and remaindered books.

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.

Copyright © 2004 Ricardo Semler. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

About the Author

Ricardo Semler has been CEO of Brazil-based Semco for the last two decades. He is known around the globe for championing his employee-friendly management style. His first book, Maverick, was an international bestseller.