Top 30 Ricardo Semler Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Growth and profit are a product of how people work together.”

— Ricardo Semler

2. “People are responsible adults at home. Why do we suddenly transform them into adolescents with no freedom when they reach the workplace?”

— Ricardo Semler

3. “The key to getting work done on time is to stop wearing a watch.”

— Ricardo Semler

4. “Human nature demands recognition. Without it, people lose their sense of purpose and become dissatisfied, restless, and unproductive.”

— Ricardo Semler

5. “Once employees feel challenged, invigorated and productive, their efforts will naturally translate into profit and growth for the organisation.”

— Ricardo Semler

6. “For a company to excel, employees must be reassured that self-interest, not the company’s, is their foremost priority. We believe an employee who puts himself first will be motivated to perform.”

— Ricardo Semler

7. “The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life.”

— Ricardo Semler

8. “The key to management is to get rid of the managers.”

— Ricardo Semler

9. “If we do not let people do things the way they do, we will never know what they are really capable of and they will just follow our boarding school rules.”

— Ricardo Semler

10. “We have absolute trust in our employees. In fact, we are partners with them.”

— Ricardo Semler

11. “If you are giving back, you took too much.”

— Ricardo Semler

12. “Only two things grow for the sake of growth: businesses and tumors.”

— Ricardo Semler

13. “If you look at any kind of modern organization and you think, ‘What are the foremost tools of power?’ You will find that it is information.”

— Ricardo Semler

14. “At Semco, you are what you do, not what or whom you control.”

— Ricardo Semler

15. “Large, centralized organizations foster alienation like stagnant ponds breed algae.”

— Ricardo Semler

16. “But uncontrolled variables are what make dreams come true. If we change the way work works we can live the dream of work-life balance and sustainability.”

— Ricardo Semler

17. “Man is by nature restless. When left too long in one place he will inevitably grow bored, unmotivated, and unproductive.”

— Ricardo Semler

18. “The best way to invest corporate profits is to give them to the employees.”

— Ricardo Semler

19. “I once worked it out – after $12 million, all millionaires are the same. That’s because we’re all humans, confined to human scale. How many homes can you live in? How many meals can you eat? You can have a living room the size of a cathedral, but you won’t live in it. It’s too big.”

— Ricardo Semler

20. “It is not socialist, as some of our critics contend. It isn’t purely capitalist, either. It is a new way. A third way. A more humane, trusting, productive, exhilarating, and, in every sense, rewarding way.”

— Ricardo Semler

21. “Intuition, luck, mistakes, serendipity – there you have four vital business concepts that every manager should know.”

— Ricardo Semler

22. “Bill Gore from Goretex was a very strong influence because he was one of the first larger companies to experiment with freedom in the workplace.”

— Ricardo Semler

23. “Every one of us has learned how to send emails on Sunday night. But how many of us know how to go a movie on Monday afternoon. You’ve unbalanced your life without balancing it with someone else.”

— Ricardo Semler

24. “The stress-free workplace that is most productive is the one where workers respect each other’s differences.”

— Ricardo Semler

25. “Exchanging the old boss for a new boss is not situational leadership. True situational leadership – flexible, effective, evolutionary – can only arise from self-management. And that means that situational leadership doesn’t change fundamentally with circumstances. It is always about giving up control.”

— Ricardo Semler

26. “There is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its work force and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees.”

— Ricardo Semler

27. “A high percentage of organisations develop a military rationale, whereby only a very small number of people make all of the decisions. There is little wonder, then, that people aren’t keen to get out of bed and come to work on a Monday morning.”

— Ricardo Semler

28. “One good question and one good answer are services to all. A sure sign of a troubled company is one where employees don’t care enough to ask and, if that’s the case, they’ll never care enough to fully deploy their talent. Just as curiosity is an antidote to boredom and indifference, the informed are more likely to remain interested, engaged, and alive with purpose.”

— Ricardo Semler

29. “On two occasions, the person I had chosen as airplane captain came through as environmental leader in this second exercise. These exercises reinforced my belief that leadership indeed depends on the situation. As circumstances change, leadership must change. A certain set of skills, instincts, and personality traits may be perfect today, but useless tomorrow.”

— Ricardo Semler

30. “The era of using people as production tools is coming to an end. Participation is infinitely more complex to practice than conventional corporate unilateralism, just as democracy is much more cumbersome than dictatorship. But there will be few companies that can afford to ignore either of them.”

— Ricardo Semler

31. “I believe no one can afford, endure or can stomach leaving half a life in the parking lot when she or he goes to work. It’s a lousy way to live and a lousy way to work.”

— Ricardo Semler

32. “Even so, these symbols still cause quite a fuss. Thirty percent of all issues in organizations are what I call boarding school stuff: rewards and punishments, how to dress, what time to show up, how to address superiors, how to behave properly. Even worse, they include fodder for the “green-eyed monster,” jealousy, things like why somebody got a raise and somebody else didn’t, why she got the better client account, or why he was asked to join the board.”

— Ricardo Semler

33. “No-one works for money alone and tapping into what people want from their careers and what they have to offer is essential.”

— Ricardo Semler

34. “People are too keen to follow standard preconceptions of how organisations should work. All too often, we feel that we are unable to make changes and so hope that someone, somewhere in your organisation knows what we are doing and what the overall aim is.”

— Ricardo Semler