The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works

To keep turnover low, we remind Semco employees to make sure that they are where they want to be, and to make sure that they are doing what they want to do. If they’re not sure, we’ll bend over backwards to find a completely different area or completely different type of work for them, just as we did for Lucia Kobayashi.

“a rolling stone gathers no moss.”

They are also free to work for our competitors, and a few do. After all, if we cannot trust someone to be ethical and decide what information is confidential, we shouldn’t be hiring them in the first place.

Top down change rarely occurs because the management tribe typically prefers to lay the burden on the employees rather than hoist it onto its own shoulders.

Change works well only if it is a nonissue. An organization that constantly, and artificially, coaches its people to change (accept change! recognize change!) is like a Darwinist standing next to a giraffe, shouting: “Stretch that neck! Stretch that neck!”

Companies respect conformity and uniformity, but they fail to see how limiting both are.

we offer incentives to employees to move around to different jobs and departments.

Besides, every one-year plan that I see has all the good things happening in the second half.

So we did what we always do when there is dissent: nothing. We believe blindly in the virtues of dissent.