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Q & A – Bernice Samuels interviews Ricardo Semler

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Bernice Samuels of FNB talks to Ricardo Semler the President of SEMCO, and executive ranked by the World Economic Forum in 1983, as Global Thought Leader of Tomorrow, about his advice to achieve success in innovation, develop a robust participatory management model and grow a company during difficult economic times whilst managing by omission.

About Bernice Samuels

Bernice SamuelsFNB’s Chief Marketing Officer, Bernice Samuels, has made a great success of the position in the time she has held it. Her journey from telecommunications and media to banking has had interesting turns and fascinating challenges. Spearheading the repositioning of FNB, Bernice Samuels was named the 2012 Marketing Personality of the year at the Sunday Times Top Brand Awards.

With more than 20 years’ experience in business, marketing strategy development and implementation, Samuels has been a key driver behind developing well-known corporate brands in South Africa and Africa including MNET, MTN and now FNB. Since her appointment at FNB in January 2011, she has been responsible for the management of FNB’s brand and overall marketing across the business. Bernice holds a BSC Honours degree from UCT in genetic engineering and an MBA from Wits Business School.

She absolutely loves what she does and is curious about the role of emotion in influencing buying decisions. She believes that in our world of overloaded channels of communication and the general lack of trust with advertising messages, finding your brand’s true emotional core and expressing it through your brand’s story is essential.

About Ricardo Semler

Extraordinary CEO, Best Selling Author and Global Leader of Tomorrow. Ricardo is known around the globe for his extraordinary success spurring SEMCO South America to success achieving 41% return on capital for 25 years. His innovative employee centric workplace democracy arguably saved SEMCO from bankruptcy. He has authored 2 best sellers – Maverick and The Seven Day Weekend. Leaders the world over admire how he relentlessly invents and champions his causes.

Ricardo Semler will present his unconventional leadership model to South African leaders and managers at The 2nd Annual FNB Progress Conference on Happiness@Work on the 17th September 2013.

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Q & A

? – BS – Your unconventional management model and democratic organisation has amassed SEMCO unprecedented success with growth at around 27% each year for the past 25 years. You have been a committed champion of your cause to change rigid, dehumanising workplaces into engaging, productive ones since the 80’s. It is only now, that a handful of businesses are starting to realise that “happiness” is not a “nice- to- have” but rather a “need- to –have”. In your opinion why has this become a strategic priority the world over?

RS – standard industry practices have run out of steam. This seemed evident 30 years ago, but these changes take anthropologic time, not business cycle periods. Letting people set their own modes of work, times and form has led to growth for us, but it also fits the bill of business requirements: our rate of return on capital has been 41% for 25 years, every year. Giving up control works, and well.

? – BS – Having recently won the award for the Most Innovative Bank, we place a high price on innovation. Similarly you place a high price on innovation within SEMCO. How have you achieved innovation within SEMCO?

RS – By stepping aside. Letting people set up their own solutions and even business units, and setting only the mutual goals, instead of working on structures and controls.

? – BS – How do you reward innovation?

RS – By letting people set up a mix of 11 different ways to remunerate themselves, from salaries, commissions and the usual solutions, all the way to percentages on sales, or royalties over product lines, and much profit distribution. Of course, this is in addition to the basic assumption of freedom to work anyhow, anywhere, any time.

? – BS – Your decision to apply a participatory management model took place at a time when SEMCO was facing bankruptcy. During your tenure Brazilian banks failed and countless companies collapsed. The future of the South African economy is dependent on small and medium business growth. Currently South African companies are facing some of the most difficult economic challenges. It is further estimated that South African productivity has hit a 46 year low. What would your advice be to business leaders in South Africa today?

RS – By giving up control, which is all they do not want to hear – but maybe should. It is the management of staff, assets and business plans that places the most constrictions on the ability to navigate troubled waters. Setting the course and controlling it to the hilt is what makes inevitability reign over opportunity.

? – BS – Most recently the South African mining industry has experienced broadly publicised industrial action. At SEMCO you were not immune to a volatile unionised business environment. Had you been advisor to the CEO of Lonmin in October last year, what would you have advised and how do you think that could have avoided the bloodshed and violence?

RS – After 25 years of regular industrial action from brazil’s fiercest union i took a step as soon as I began my cycle at Semco: visiting the unions headquarters. That was the first time they had ever been visited by a businessman in their history. We then opened all doors to sit-ins during strikes, gave out free lunch and set up platforms for union leaders to address workers. We then took whatever communication action we could to say that we understood, respected and would even agree with many union issues if we were workers. We then would explain why we disagree but respect the strike, and started teaching workers to read our financials. I would always advise any and every businessman to be 100% open with unions and never coerce or confront – we are no longer in the 1880’s…

? – BS – I believe you personally have a “long service award” for “not making a decision” and even though you have the controlling stock in SEMCO – you have never used your VETO power in the past 25 years? Have you ever regretted this?

RS – I’ve disagreed with many a decision, and had many pet projects sent to file, but the gain of independent thinkers and self-propulsion has always paid off in the balance.

? – BS – You will be a headline speaker at our 2nd Annual FNB Progress Conference on Happiness@Work on the 17th September 2013. Can you give us some insights as to what you will be sharing with the South African audience. In particular, how do you define happiness@work?

RS – I plan to speak about the reasons organizations are such shabby career decisions, and how businesses can change this quickly. Happiness in life, or at work, are similar, and they involve freedom to choose (like in a marriage, or buying a house, or having kids – I have 5!), getting management off your back (much as a spouse!) And feeling that your talents and emotions are aligned with your day to day. Easier said than done, but can be done, and is (mostly) at our companies.

Happiness@Work Leadership Lessons I Have Learned from the World’s Greatest Thinkers

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Ingrid Ashwin | July 2013. Ingrid Ashwin is the Event Producer for The Progress Conference series.

For 20 years, Ingrid has built personal relations with the world’s top thought-leaders. By staying close to the local business community she has built a very real understanding of the challenges and opportunities required to create and grow value in South African organisations. In response to these requirements she has sought out and secured the participation of the most relevant thought leaders to inspire and develop new management competencies in marketing, leadership, human resources, strategy and finance.

Ingrid’s work has afforded her first hand personal insight to the thinking of Tom Peters the “uber-guru”, Professor Robert Kaplan, Harvard Business School, Professor Dave Ulrich, the leading HR authority, the late Steven Covey, Dr Edward de Bono, Philip Kotler, Rudi Giuliani, Richard Koch, Martin Lindstrom, Dr Martin Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology and others. Most recently she is working with Ricardo Semler, Tal Ben-Shahar and Jessica Pryce-Jones to develop solutions for South African organisations to achieve happiness at work.

It is Ingrid’s belief that by refusing to accept the status quo we can achieve progress.

_________________________________________________________________________

During a recession we suggest that leaders face some new questions: “What makes work either stressful or engaging, rote or rich with meaning? In either good or bad times where do you and your people find meaning?  How do you foster abundance in people? How do you think the story of your work and your life might become a legacy of meaning for your and for others?” Professor Dave Ulrich.

The lessons I have learned from eight of the world’s greatest business thinkers.

They are unanimous on one thing. The business leaders most likely to succeed are those that expect and plan towards a business environment that will be very different in a few years’ time, never mind a decade of half century. The 20th century work model is no longer relevant and there is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its workforce and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees.

– Leaders DO People and kindness is free.

– Take care of the people. The people take care of the service. The service takes care of the customer. The customer takes care of the profit. The profit takes care of the reinvestment. The reinvestment takes care of the reinvention. The reinvention takes care of the future.

– Celebrate the small wins on your journey to the BIG wins.

– You hire adults – treat them like adults

– Corporate pyramids are the cause of much corporate evil. They emphasise power, promote insecurity, distort communications and make it difficult for the people who plan and the people who execute to move in the same direction.

– The “Seven Day Weekend” is not an elaborate game of hooky. Going AWOL is sometimes necessary. If we want people to do only the company work while they are in the office, shouldn’t we have corporate police to makes sure they are not working on weekends.

– Don’t tell your employees you trust them and then audit and search them when they go home.

– Don’t send your people on a motivational course – change their job and let them choose their own boss.

– Making meaning makes money.

– Put delight at the top of your list of contributors to meaning at work.

– Create tiny moments of appreciation.

– Notice something beautiful.

– Get a kick out of a shared joke.

– Cultivate moments of playfulness. Brainstorm sources of pleasure and fun.

– Build mental toughness, signature strengths and strong relationships.

– If your business involves setbacks. Risky decisions and problems hire optimists.

– For every negative piece of feedback your people need 3 positive inputs. It is 3:1 to sustain positive emotions and in turn resilience.

– When the going gets tough use your signature strengths.

happiness pays!

– Get people to experience positive emotions so they become more engaged in that they do, their creativity levels go up and relationships improve.

– Where there is democracy there is choice and without choice happiness is but impossible to attain.

– Encourage employees to take regular breaks for recovery to recharge their psychological batteries to fulfil their potential for creativity and productivity.

– happiness@work is not a flaky, happy- clappy new religion – it is a science.

– If you’re conscientious you’ll put in the hours, you will work hard at what you do but it may not make you happy. Engagement in isolation does not promote career and business success.

Give people the opportunity to raise issues that are important to them and to voice their perception that they are doing something worthwhile.

– Ask your people if they would be willing to recommend your organisation to a friend?

Gen X and Y people are likely to stay two years longer if they believe they are learning.

Let people do the work that puts them in “flow: – the feeling where the task is almost effortless and time passes by without them noticing.

– If your mind is dull you have no hope of impressing people in any situation. It doesn’t need a high IQ or reams of knowledge. All it needs is creativity, imagination and empathy.

– Life is something to be enjoyed and lived rather than a well of suffering to be endured on the way to better things.

– For 2400 years we have been obsessed with argument as a way of thinking. It has served us well but is ego driven and adversarial. When people think in parallel they look at the matter from the same point of view.

With final words of advice from Ricardo Semler, the CEO who leads the most unusual workplace with extraordinary financial success.

“The ostrich that buries its head in the sand has a bigger problem than limited vision; its rear end is an enormous target. It’s very simple – the repetition, boredom and aggravation that too many people accept as part of working can be replaces with joy, inspiration and freedom.”

Happiness@work leadership lessons I have learned from the world’s greatest thinkers

/in ,

By Ingrid Ashwin | July 2013. Ingrid Ashwin is the Event Producer for The Progress Conference series.

For 20 years, Ingrid has built personal relations with the world’s top thought-leaders. By staying close to the local business community she has built a very real understanding of the challenges and opportunities required to create and grow value in South African organisations. In response to these requirements she has sought out and secured the participation of the most relevant thought leaders to inspire and develop new management competencies in marketing, leadership, human resources, strategy and finance.

 

Ingrid’s work has afforded her first hand personal insight to the thinking of Tom Peters the “uber-guru”, Professor Robert Kaplan, Harvard Business School, Professor Dave Ulrich, the leading HR authority, the late Steven Covey, Dr Edward de Bono, Philip Kotler, Rudi Giuliani, Richard Koch, Martin Lindstrom, Dr Martin Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology and others. Most recently she is working with Ricardo Semler, Tal Ben-Shahar and Jessica Pryce-Jones to develop solutions for South African organisations to achieve happiness at work.

 

It is Ingrid’s belief that by refusing to accept the status quo we can achieve progress.

_________________________________________________________________________

During a recession we suggest that leaders face some new questions: “What makes work either stressful or engaging, rote or rich with meaning? In either good or bad times where do you and your people find meaning?  How do you foster abundance in people? How do you think the story of your work and your life might become a legacy of meaning for your and for others?” Professor Dave Ulrich.

 

The lessons I have learned from eight of the world’s greatest business thinkers.

 

They are unanimous on one thing. The business leaders most likely to succeed are those that expect and plan towards a business environment that will be very different in a few years’ time, never mind a decade of half century. The 20th century work model is no longer relevant and there is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its workforce and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees.

 

– Leaders DO People and kindness is free.

– Take care of the people. The people take care of the service. The service takes care of the customer. The customer takes care of the profit. The profit takes care of the reinvestment. The reinvestment takes care of the reinvention. The reinvention takes care of the future.

– Celebrate the small wins on your journey to the BIG wins.

– You hire adults – treat them like adults

– Corporate pyramids are the cause of much corporate evil. They emphasise power, promote insecurity, distort communications and make it difficult for the people who plan and the people who execute to move in the same direction.

– The “Seven Day Weekend” is not an elaborate game of hooky. Going AWOL is sometimes necessary. If we want people to do only the company work while they are in the office, shouldn’t we have corporate police to makes sure they are not working on weekends.

– Don’t tell your employees you trust them and then audit and search them when they go home.

– Don’t send your people on a motivational course – change their job and let them choose their own boss.

– Making meaning makes money.

– Put delight at the top of your list of contributors to meaning at work.

– Create tiny moments of appreciation.

– Notice something beautiful.

– Get a kick out of a shared joke.

– Cultivate moments of playfulness. Brainstorm sources of pleasure and fun.

– Build mental toughness, signature strengths and strong relationships.

– If your business involves setbacks. Risky decisions and problems hire optimists.

– For every negative piece of feedback your people need 3 positive inputs. It is 3:1 to sustain positive emotions and in turn resilience.

– When the going gets tough use your signature strengths.

happiness pays!

– Get people to experience positive emotions so they become more engaged in that they do, their creativity levels go up and relationships improve.

– Where there is democracy there is choice and without choice happiness is but impossible to attain.

– Encourage employees to take regular breaks for recovery to recharge their psychological batteries to fulfil their potential for creativity and productivity.

– happiness@work is not a flaky, happy- clappy new religion – it is a science.

– If you’re conscientious you’ll put in the hours, you will work hard at what you do but it may not make you happy. Engagement in isolation does not promote career and business success.

Give people the opportunity to raise issues that are important to them and to voice their perception that they are doing something worthwhile.

– Ask your people if they would be willing to recommend your organisation to a friend?

Gen X and Y people are likely to stay two years longer if they believe they are learning.

Let people do the work that puts them in “flow: – the feeling where the task is almost effortless and time passes by without them noticing.

– If your mind is dull you have no hope of impressing people in any situation. It doesn’t need a high IQ or reams of knowledge. All it needs is creativity, imagination and empathy.

– Life is something to be enjoyed and lived rather than a well of suffering to be endured on the way to better things.

– For 2400 years we have been obsessed with argument as a way of thinking. It has served us well but is ego driven and adversarial. When people think in parallel they look at the matter from the same point of view.

 

With final words of advice from Ricardo Semler, the CEO who leads the most unusual workplace with extraordinary financial success.

 

“The ostrich that buries its head in the sand has a bigger problem than limited vision; its rear end is an enormous target. It’s very simple – the repetition, boredom and aggravation that too many people accept as part of working can be replaces with joy, inspiration and freedom.”

How Leaders Create Value Through Meaning

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By Prof Dave Ulrich (dou@umich.edu)

This morning, people all over the planet got out of bed and got ready for work.  Some headed out before dawn in high-end cars to claim high-rise offices with high-tech computers and high-brow clients.  Some headed out before dawn to walk barefoot, wares on their head, to claim a choice spot in the dirt near the entrance to the village market.  Some people wrestled with the muses to create artistic masterpieces or solve perplexing scientific problems.  Some wrestled with boredom to complete their shifts at cash registers, call centers, or assembly lines.  Some pitched their resumes in business suits, looking for good benefits and a sure path to comfortable retirement.  Some made their pitch in ragged jeans on street corners, looking for someone to rent their muscles for at least the day.

Some people in every one of these and many other categories by which we could define work found abundance – meaning, purpose, even delight in their labor today. Other people in every category found world-weary tedium, frustration, and a sense of despair.

Which were you?

Which were the people you work with?

People find abundance or meaning in many settings – in the privacy of our homes and the expanses of nature, in churches, ballparks, and community centers, in family and friendship circles.  But work takes the lion’s share of our time and our energy.  We spend more time at work than at play, at family gatherings, at religious meetings, or at hobbies.  The organizations in which we labor are thus a primary setting for not only accomplishing assignments but for finding an abiding sense of abundance or meaning in life.  Work is a universal setting in which to fulfill our universal search for meaning.

We describe this as a meaning-making, value-creating, hope-building process for individual employees and for the leaders who coordinate their efforts.  In doing so we hope to structure the private conversations and inform the corporate decisions that shift deficit-driven thinking toward abundance at work.  Meaning or abundance is not only a prerogative for rich people, smart people, prestigious people, successful people.  Meaning or abundance is not only in short supply for poor people, mediocre people, struggling people, hurting people.  Great leaders recognize the vital importance of the search for meaning or abundance to everyone in their organization.  Including themselves.

Leaders have the task of creating a vision for their organizations that is charged with meaning – that resonates with not only the minds and hands but the hearts of those they lead.  Ultimately the crisis of meaning is always becomes a crisis of leadership.

Leaders must not only understand and experience but also institutionalize the creation of meaning at work.

This discussion provokes the following questions:

– How does employee meaning affect business results and leads to important business outcomes of customer service, investor results, and strategy execution.

– What is the role of the leader in creating employee meaning?  What is a clear definition of how leaders can and should create personal meaning in the workplace?

– How can leaders making meaning happen for employees?

– How can meaning be institutionalized in the workplace?  How do HR practices secure and sustain organization results?

Leaders need to move beyond statements about “employees are our most important asset” to showing why employee meaning leads to business results and how to make meaning happen.

How leaders create value through meaning

/in , ,

By Prof Dave Ulrich (dou@umich.edu)

This morning, people all over the planet got out of bed and got ready for work.  Some headed out before dawn in high-end cars to claim high-rise offices with high-tech computers and high-brow clients.  Some headed out before dawn to walk barefoot, wares on their head, to claim a choice spot in the dirt near the entrance to the village market.  Some people wrestled with the muses to create artistic masterpieces or solve perplexing scientific problems.  Some wrestled with boredom to complete their shifts at cash registers, call centers, or assembly lines.  Some pitched their resumes in business suits, looking for good benefits and a sure path to comfortable retirement.  Some made their pitch in ragged jeans on street corners, looking for someone to rent their muscles for at least the day.

 

Some people in every one of these and many other categories by which we could define work found abundance – meaning, purpose, even delight in their labor today. Other people in every category found world-weary tedium, frustration, and a sense of despair.

 

Which were you?

 

Which were the people you work with?

 

People find abundance or meaning in many settings – in the privacy of our homes and the expanses of nature, in churches, ballparks, and community centers, in family and friendship circles.  But work takes the lion’s share of our time and our energy.  We spend more time at work than at play, at family gatherings, at religious meetings, or at hobbies.  The organizations in which we labor are thus a primary setting for not only accomplishing assignments but for finding an abiding sense of abundance or meaning in life.  Work is a universal setting in which to fulfill our universal search for meaning.

 

We describe this as a meaning-making, value-creating, hope-building process for individual employees and for the leaders who coordinate their efforts.  In doing so we hope to structure the private conversations and inform the corporate decisions that shift deficit-driven thinking toward abundance at work.  Meaning or abundance is not only a prerogative for rich people, smart people, prestigious people, successful people.  Meaning or abundance is not only in short supply for poor people, mediocre people, struggling people, hurting people.  Great leaders recognize the vital importance of the search for meaning or abundance to everyone in their organization.  Including themselves.

 

Leaders have the task of creating a vision for their organizations that is charged with meaning – that resonates with not only the minds and hands but the hearts of those they lead.  Ultimately the crisis of meaning is always becomes a crisis of leadership.

 

Leaders must not only understand and experience but also institutionalize the creation of meaning at work.

 

This discussion provokes the following questions:

– How does employee meaning affect business results and leads to important business outcomes of customer service, investor results, and strategy execution.

– What is the role of the leader in creating employee meaning?  What is a clear definition of how leaders can and should create personal meaning in the workplace?

– How can leaders making meaning happen for employees?

– How can meaning be institutionalized in the workplace?  How do HR practices secure and sustain organization results?

 

Leaders need to move beyond statements about “employees are our most important asset” to showing why employee meaning leads to business results and how to make meaning happen.

 

Ricardo Semler – Maverick or Lateral Thinker?

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By Nicola Tyler | 31 July 2013

“If we have a cardinal strategy that forms the bedrock of all these challenges, it’s “Ask Why?”.    Ask it all the time, and always ask it three times in a row.  This doesn’t come naturally.  People are conditioned to recoil from questioning too much.  First, it’s rude and dangerous.  Second, it may imply we are ignorant or uninformed.  Third, it means everything we think we know may not be correct or true.  Fourth, management is usually frightened by the prospect of employees who question continually.  But, mostly, it means putting aside all the rote or pat answers that have resulted from what I call ‘crystallized’ thinking, the state of mind where ideas have so hardened into inflexible and unquestioned concepts that they are no longer of any use.  Employees must be free to question, to analyze, to investigate, and a company must be flexible enough to listen to the answers.  Those habits are key to longevity, growth and profit. 

We don’t know if Semler ever attended a lateral thinking seminar, but what we do know is that Edward de Bono introduced us to a deliberate lateral thinking tool called Challenge.  A tool that asks the question “why?” – three times!  The challenge tool is brilliant for questioning businesses’ processes and systems, but can be applied to any traditional thinking.

Challenge is designed to question the status quo in a deliberate way but without attacking it.  The technique is simple to learn, yet despite its simplicity, we still tend to give up before the end.  In the de Bono approach, we would list our traditional thinking about a situation, what he terms a “Checklist of Current Thinking”.  Once you have that, you then ask Why in the same style that Semler does, but in a slightly more deliberate manner.

The first approach is to ask Why C?  The C stands for Cut.  Here we are questioning the necessity of something – do we really need it or could this be “cut” out so to speak.  If you consider a chair, you might challenge the legs of the chair.  Can we “cut” the legs?  In my work, I generally find that there are few things people are comfortable cutting:  often the Why C naturally leads the thinker to the next Why in the process.

Why B?  The B stands for Because and is intended to highlight the reasons why something is done in a particular way.  We do this ‘because…’.  Considering the chair example, chairs have legs because they provide support for the seat:  it’s a way of keeping the seat off the ground and creating height for comfort and style.    In the Challenge process, de Bono also encourages us to question the validity of these reasons.  Is style a valid reason?  Perhaps not.  Is a way of creating a height a valid reason?  Yes it is.  If it weren’t for the legs, the chair would be called a cushion.  It would just be a seat on the floor, and if it was a moulded seat, might even be more uncomfortable.

Which bring us to the last Why – Why A?  Here the A stands for Alternatives, and de Bono asks us to question is there another way – is there an alternative to legs, or could we seek to satisfy the reason in a new, different or better way.  The deliberate search for an alternative requires a positive mental attitude, (the basic belief that there may be a better way), as well as deliberate effort.  All too often we don’t even consider alternatives, for the same reasons that Semler states – you may be proven wrong, or perhaps even right.

João Vendramin, our 60-year old director emeritus, once asked a worker if he’d ever considered a different approach to his job.   ‘He answered that his boss told him to do it that way,’ Vendramin remembers.  ‘So I insisted.  He told me that once he had done this job differently, but his boss reprimanded him.  While trying to explain to his boss what happened he said, “I was thinking that….” To which his boss instantly replied, “Thinking?  You are not supposed to think.  I am the one who thinks here.”’

Source: The Seven-Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler

Want to know more?  Ricardo Semler, Author of The Seven-Day Weekend and Maverick and CEO of Semco, one of Brazil’s top performing, privately owned companies, will be sharing his innovative thinking.  Visit www.theprogressconference.com for more information or call Ingrid on 011 463 9898.