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The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works
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Sales rank 163,795
Customers rating (based on 19 reviews)
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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.
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| Publisher | Portfolio Hardcover | | Release date | 05/2004 | | Availability | | | Edition | Hardcover |
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Ricardo Semler: Set Them Free: For nearly 25 years, Ricardo Semler, CEO of Brazil-based Semco, has let his employees set their own hours, wages, even choose their own IT. The result: increased productivity, long-term loyalty and phenomenal growth. Can his radical approach work... (@ CIO Insight)
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 Weekend Reading Only
This is a business book written by the CEO of a successful, mid-size Brazilian company. The book uses stories from the company (Semco) business history to drive home specific insights and points. The thrust of the book is to praise and explain the underlying principles behind Semco's success, which seems one part business ethics and focus, and one part extreme delegation and decentralization geographically, role-wise, and business division-wise. The book starts out extolling and explaining that since business devices like email and Blackberries, and the sense of urgency of modern business, eat into and corrupt our sacred weekend personal time anyway, then why not give snippets of personal time throughout the week so that working weekends is part of the normal culture. The book then meanders to applying this whole culture of 'laid back', sort of work whenever you want, be self-driven into how those constructs extend into ways of making business decisions.
The book seems didactic and explanatory and lecturing more than it does accessible and self-critical. So the tone itself seems more self-congratulatory than passionate. This is a bit of a turn-off. It also doesn't really address cultural differences in South America and Brazil vs. America where I suspect a large % of the books readers will hail from. While a couple of US companies, such as Best Buy, have let their employees adopt a self-driven schedule, most companies aren't going to let their workers have time off during business hours of the week, even if those employees work hours on the weekend. As such, a lot of the book could even be described as a philosophical nudging to small and mid-size business CEO's or entrepreneurs to 'relinquish control' or a control paradigm and "Lighten Up. Breathe. Let intuition, mistakes, and serendipity happen". Clearly this style is so anathema to many US corporations that the book becomes an fantastical journey into what it might be like to work in Brazil rather than how to run a US business, for most readers. The sections on ethics are the most enlightened and valuable. I would not recommend this unless you are a manager, vice-president, CEO or entrepreneur with cultural and work-hour control of employees dealing with the issues of central control, accountability, and how to optimize hard workers and getting them time at home.
 Secret to understanding The Seven Day Weekend
A lot people who read this book are baffled as to what exactly Semco and Ricardo Semler are doing that is so revolutionary. My simple answer is this:
They are treating their employees as "adults" and guess what? They are discovering that their employees behave as adults! Wow!
What's hard to understand for most people who are treated at their work as "children" (boss, may I do this, may I do that, etc., etc.), is that they actually behave as "adult-children"? All the resultant effects of the current and dying corporate system are totally predictable: low esteem, no initiative, fear, office politics, mismatch of talents and goals, etc., etc.
This is the revolutionary premise behind the success of what the 21st century "company" will look like.
 Good! Thought provoking. Less than Maverick though
Seven-Day weekend is the second (English) book by Richardo Semler, the CEO of Semco. Semco is a weird Brazilian company known for it's modern HR practices. The history of Semco and Ricardo Semler was explained well in his first English book: Maverick.
The author makes a point that the workweek has invaded the weekend via internet and email. Now it's time to abandon the standard week/weekend thinking and have weekend whenever we want and have week whenever we want. So we'll have a seven day workweek AND a seven day weekend.
The book is a collection of stories and opinions by Richardo which are organized according to the days of the week. Every day a couple of stories, mostly about Semco but also about other activities in which Richardo was involved in.
Some of the more interesting points and stories are, for example, where the author is questioning the need to always grow. In business it seems to be the purpose of the business to grow bigger. Richardo questions this purpose and asks why this is. Cannot companies stay small and then still be successful?
Seven-day weekend is certainly worth reading. It's a small book it takes maybe a day to read it. Its well written, it keeps you awake and the stories are interesting. Though, I personally found it less interesting than Maverick (which I had read first). If you need to chose between the seven day weekend or Maverick, I'd go for Maverick. If, after Maverick, you still do not have enough of Semler, then the seven-day weekend is for you.
Very Provocative Book Will Make You Think
I had read sound bites from Semler over the past few months, but finally got the book and devoured it over a holiday weekend. It did not disappoint. It presents some very non-conventional wisdom that challenges all sorts of corporate policies and norms with the question - why not do it differently? I wrote about several of these insights on my blog (http://creativeoutletlabs.wordpress.com/?s=semler). This book is highly rated as I am reminded frequently of several of the concepts in the books and I have recommended it to many others. You'll love this one!
Jennifer B. Davis
http://jenniferbdavis.blogspot.com
How Work Should Be
What an amazing story this book recounts. I kept reading of ideas they had and thinking - Well of course that would never work - and then read on to discover that they did indeed make it work. How I wish that all work was this democratic, this inspiring and this creative. When I had finished the book I felt a sense of excitement that the old methods of working, which seem unchangeable, could so easily be discarded. Well done Ricardo Semler and all the people who have helped to make your ideas reality. You are my heroes.
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