TED Talk Thursday: Ricardo Semler on Running a Company with (Almost) No Rules

Ricardo Semler, CEO of Brazil-based portfolio manager Semco Partners, has been making headlines with his radical leadership style and support of industrial democracy for decades. Under Semler’s ownership, the company’s revenue has grown along with the notoriety of his leadership strategies.

After writing a handful of books on corporate re-engineering, Semler brought his radical philosophy to TED for a talk about running a company with (almost) no rules. By eliminating all “boarding school aspects” of corporate leadership—strict schedules, dress codes, micromanaging tendencies, etc.—Semler increased employee satisfaction while concurrently driving up productivity.

Better still? That was 30 years ago.

Semler continued this borderline corporate carte blanche by allowing employees to “buy back” their weekdays with salary cut, divulging employee salaries and company earnings to any curious employees and conducting bi-annual reviews of workplace leaders.

Semler’s methods, however unorthodox they may seem, were so successful at Semco Partners that he decided to translate them to the classroom. By affording students freedom to delegate themselves, Semler found that students were able to become more engaged with the world around them.