Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace

How would you like to work in a company that has no receptionists, secretaries, standard hierarchies, dress codes, or executive perks ... a company that lets you set your work hours and even your salary, and asks you to review your boss...a company whose ways of doing business are totally opposite those of most corporations? How would you like to work in a company that not only breaks all the rules, but succeeds?
Can't be done, you say?
In 1980 21-year-old Ricardo Semler took over the reins of the company his father founded and built. Ricardo proceeded to break every rule of doing business, firing an entire echelon of upper-level managers. Once he opened the floodgates to change, Semler never - even when he was tempted to - closed them again.
Semler's management system allows employees to work at home, study and discuss the company's financial statements, make corporate decisions, take over the cafeteria kitchen, start their own business with company assets, and redesign the products Semco builds and how they are built. The result: in ten years of constant experimentation - a time period in which Brazil's economy faltered - Semco has achieved a growth rate of 600 percent.
In chronicling Semco's inner revolution, Semler shows how his radical ideas and strategies, as well as his nuts-and-bolts specifics, can be applied to any company anywhere. For instance, he includes actual forms like the questionnaires that Semco's employees use to grade their managers.