Ricardo Semler has a very good grasp on human nature. He uses this to allow people to keep themselves motivated by aligning their personal interests with that of the companies. He thinks outside the box and goes against conventional wisdom, but as he might say, why is conventional wisdom wise at all? I read this at a time when I was going through a lot of boredom with life and work. It was very inspirational and thought provoking. ( )

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. ( )