Much of our years as children and teenagers are spent doing nothing but school related activities. We wake up at 6, leave school at 2, and work for an additional 3 hours at home. All in all, I spend 12 hours, half the day, doing activities related to school. Not fun. When we graduate and go to college, we do the same and finally when we graduate college, we do the same thing with our everyday jobs.
“In the periods in which we have a lot of money, we have very little time, and when we finally have time, we have neither the money nor the heath.”
The idea for Ricardo Semlers Company was to give people time to get away from their work during the weeks, so that people did not feel wholly consumed by their jobs. So they took away the “boarding school aspect” of the company. No dress code, no set times you had to arrive and leave the offices.
The principle idea was to give the employees the power. Much to Semlers surprise, the average age of people interested in his company were not older people, but rather younger people with an average age of just 29. The workers wanted to have control and time on their “terminal days” to do whatever they pleased, and to not be worried about going into work the next day at 7 am. Likewise, the bosses didn’t want to know where the employees were, as long as the work got done.
When the work was done, they were rewarded.
“If we set them a goal to sell 57 widgets in the week, and they sold them by Wednesday, we tell them to go to the beach.” The principle is that with less rules and more rewards, the work would get done much more effectively. The theory, worked better than anyone had thought it would.
Another principle was that they listened to people and regular employees and let them influence and vote on decisions with high level board members.
“It kept us honest.” Said Semler.
Then a real thought occurred to Ricardo. What if they took this new idea, which was working so great in their own company, and made a school with more or less the same ideas.
The end goal, was to engineer a new type of school that taught wisdom rather than grades, and to change the way we use education. After all, what is more important? Actually learning, or getting a good grade?
It made me think, too.
It is the same format as the very project we are working on with my English teacher, Mr. Shreffler. We are focusing more on learning and being excited to gain more knowledge then we are on taking tests on short reads that do not pertain to real world knowledge at all.
Then I wondered, if different people around the world are innovating the way school works, and so many people have figured much more efficient ways of working the norms with so many people willing to get on board with the new but proven model, why do we still use the same system?
Just as with everything else we deal with, why do we get sucked into a pattern that doesn’t change while the world we know is constantly changing? As I always think about it in football (soccer) terms, you learn very quickly that in the game if you fail to adapt with what is happening around you, you get burned. Badly. The same can be said with the way we run most companies and schools, and in my eyes, we are just waiting to be burned.
Link to Ricardo Semlers TED Talk on how to run a company with (almost) no rules: http://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_radical_wisdom_for_a_company_a_school_a_life#t-497693
“In the periods in which we have a lot of money, we have very little time, and when we finally have time, we have neither the money nor the heath.”
The idea for Ricardo Semlers Company was to give people time to get away from their work during the weeks, so that people did not feel wholly consumed by their jobs. So they took away the “boarding school aspect” of the company. No dress code, no set times you had to arrive and leave the offices.
The principle idea was to give the employees the power. Much to Semlers surprise, the average age of people interested in his company were not older people, but rather younger people with an average age of just 29. The workers wanted to have control and time on their “terminal days” to do whatever they pleased, and to not be worried about going into work the next day at 7 am. Likewise, the bosses didn’t want to know where the employees were, as long as the work got done.
When the work was done, they were rewarded.
“If we set them a goal to sell 57 widgets in the week, and they sold them by Wednesday, we tell them to go to the beach.” The principle is that with less rules and more rewards, the work would get done much more effectively. The theory, worked better than anyone had thought it would.
Another principle was that they listened to people and regular employees and let them influence and vote on decisions with high level board members.
“It kept us honest.” Said Semler.
Then a real thought occurred to Ricardo. What if they took this new idea, which was working so great in their own company, and made a school with more or less the same ideas.
The end goal, was to engineer a new type of school that taught wisdom rather than grades, and to change the way we use education. After all, what is more important? Actually learning, or getting a good grade?
It made me think, too.
It is the same format as the very project we are working on with my English teacher, Mr. Shreffler. We are focusing more on learning and being excited to gain more knowledge then we are on taking tests on short reads that do not pertain to real world knowledge at all.
Then I wondered, if different people around the world are innovating the way school works, and so many people have figured much more efficient ways of working the norms with so many people willing to get on board with the new but proven model, why do we still use the same system?
Just as with everything else we deal with, why do we get sucked into a pattern that doesn’t change while the world we know is constantly changing? As I always think about it in football (soccer) terms, you learn very quickly that in the game if you fail to adapt with what is happening around you, you get burned. Badly. The same can be said with the way we run most companies and schools, and in my eyes, we are just waiting to be burned.
Link to Ricardo Semlers TED Talk on how to run a company with (almost) no rules: http://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_radical_wisdom_for_a_company_a_school_a_life#t-497693