How we went digital without a strategy
October 24, 2008
During a research on wether a company needs a strategy or not to survive in the global market I came across this article in an issue of Harvard Business Review from October/September 2000. In this article Ricardo Semler, the CEO of the brazilian based company Semco, describes how his company runs already successfully for more than 20 years without having a strategy.
This article is rather interesting since you can find a lot of information on how to do and implement a business strategy and why it is good to have one, but very few article about why not to have one.
Link to the article:
How we went digital without a strategy (excerpt)
Additional links:
Semco website
Entry Filed under: Journal article. Tags: Business, Strategy.
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Jan Schulte
Philip Preissing
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Philip Preissing | October 25, 2008 at 12:13
The article contains other interesting facts about the semco company and it’s company culture.
The author shares six lessons they learned to be a creative and adaptive organization:
- Forget about the top line: The measure for business sucess is not it’s size but how long it survives
- Never stop being a startup: Every six months, each of Semco’s departments has to justify it’s continued existence and all employees are asked to be rehired.
- Don’t be a nanny: Don’t treat your employees like children. People at Semco decide when and how much they work, when they get on vacation and even how they are paid. But since they know that they have to be rehired every six months, they know that their jobs are always at risk.
- Let talent find it’s place: Let people chose in which department they want to work.
- Make decisions quickly and openly: Every employee can attend board meetings and present their business ideas. Ideas are checked against only two well-defined criteria and if they meet them, the business gets launched inside Semco.
- Partner promiscuously: When you start a new business, you need help. Semco’s foundation over the years were partnerships with other firms.