My favorite documentary is one called Up. ... For your listeners, it’s a guy, Michael Apted who in 1964 decided to follow about a dozen or actually more kids from very different backgrounds and from the UK and some in orphanages, and some very well off to try and establish how much people are stuck to their context, to their social context. ... It’s quite an extraordinary way to look at humanity and see can people really escape their social constraints and their initial lay of life?
Managed profile
Not claimed by Ricardo Semler
Ricardo Semler has not joined FLAPSS and has not endorsed it. This page is a reference record assembled from published interviews and public remarks. Every answer below is a direct quotation with the source and date shown next to it.
RS
Ricardo Semler
Chief executive and later chairman of Semco Partners, Brazil
Brazil · b. 1959
Business and finance
About
Took over the Brazilian manufacturing firm Semco from his father in 1980 and restructured it around self-set salaries, elected managers and no fixed working hours. He later founded the Lumiar schools in Brazil.
3 answers
What we've done all of these years is very simple, is use the little tool, which is ask three whys in a row. Because the first why you always have a good answer for. The second why, it starts getting difficult. By the third why, you don't really know why you're doing what you're doing.
So we'd say things like, let's agree that you're going to sell 57 widgets per week. If you sell them by Wednesday, please go to the beach. Don't create a problem for us, for manufacturing, for application, then we have to buy new companies, we have to buy our competitors, we have to do all kinds of things because you sold too many widgets. So go to the beach and start again on Monday.
Every quotation above is reproduced from the source shown beside it and has not been edited. Ricardo Semler did not write these answers for FLAPSS. Request a correction or removal.