To be honnest, when a friend told me about Ricardo Semler I almost laughed.

Who’s Ricard Semler ? A Brasilian CEO who took his father’s little company (turnover of $3 millions in 1984) to an international group, with a turnover of $ 150 millions, 27% annual growth on the last ten years… Impressive ? Especially when you knows how he drives his company.

His credo ? Trust his employees and let them self-manage. Employees choose their working hour, their salary and even their managers.

Self-management also improves flexibily and innovation. And innovation helps people being more adaptable. In a few word, a very clear concrete example of the intrapreneur concept.

Reading more about him, (he wrote a few books about his company and the way he runs it, like “the seven day weekend”, maverick and you can also download “managing wihtout managers” or “why my former employees still work for me”) helps to understand his vision, why he’s doing that…and why he succeeds. There’s so much examples of how is vision impact things in his company that a blog wouldn’t be enough to explain everything.

In fact, there are lots of thing in his context and the way Semco is organized thant can explain how such a thing is possible. And why you won’t be able to do the same in every companies.

But the fact remains : his vision of management and interactions is fully 2.0 ready.

I’m half dubitative and half excited about that…but I can’t help asking myself: fool or visionnary ?

You can read more here.