Business Lessons from sucessful entrepreneurs and business leaders: LunchLearning.com

Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes

Video Time: 48 minutes 21 seconds
***After the introduction, Ricardo begins speaking at about minute: 4:20***

This is yet another reason why I started LunchLearning.com…new ideas and new ways of thinking are so prevalent. . .so easy to grab and run with. . .IF we allow ourselves to live outside our own world. . .to experience and impact our lives and work lives through new learning and objectivity.

In this lecture at MIT, Ricardo Semler makes the argument that we should “Lead by Omission.” A method that posits we should look at managing our businesses essentially, without, management…that once you’re IN an organization or an industry, you become almost incapable of changing it through management. For entrepreneurs building companies, it’s almost a lesson in necessity, for well-established firms though, it’ll probably serve as a wake-up-call for what can be done with less.

It’s akin to a successful career or lifestyle: when we’re young we carry few lifestyle entrapments/bills, etc. Later in life as we add more “things” to our world, we also add entrapments, and more bills.

Think about it.

And the best part? This too, was a lunchtime lecture at MIT!

From Semler’s bio:
Known around the globe for his innovative, employee-centric management style, Ricardo Semler is a true visionary who advises businesses on how they can significantly improve performance by restructuring relationships with their people.

Ricardo Semler is president of Semco S/A, based in Brazil, and the author of two books: Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace and The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works

Ricardo urges audiences to take a realistic look at what works, what’s possible, and what makes sense in today’s world, given our technologies, the rapid pace of change and the increasing failure of current practice to adapt. Technology that was supposed to make life easier—laptops, cell phones, e-mail, pagers—has stolen our free time instead and destroyed the traditional nine-to-five workday. Why, for instance, haven’t we learned to go golfing on Monday morning when we’ve learned to take our work home on Friday night?

Reading time: 4 - 7 minutes

Video Time: varies

Keeping with Friday’s theme of a few different shorter videos as opposed to a single long video, I thought I would do the same today with a few vids from Tim Ferriss. Those of you who know me, also know that I’m fond of personal and business productivity. Some of the reason for this, I believe stems from certain work experiences I had in college (working at M&M Mars on various assembly lines, a series of kitchen jobs, and on a framing crew building condos in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty), for example.

As a result when I first read about Tim Ferriss in Transitions Abroad magazine back in 2007, and then listened to a webcast of him about a week or so later, I knew I needed to learn more about his work/play philosophies. Reason being, not only did he seem to focus on productivity, but he also covered how paying attention to productivity allowed him to not only perform well from a business standpoint, but also enjoy life at the same time. And that theme is exactly what I have built my own life and company around — even prior to reading about Tim.

Anyway, for those who don’t know about Tim and the Four Hour Work Week (4HWW) as of yet, these videos will serve as a nice introduction to his story and ideas. For those already in the know, with the exception of the first video, which sums up the philosophy behind the 4HWW, and the outtake from his interview with Loic Le Meur of Seesmic, each of the videos that follow are ones I haven’t seen myself as of yet, so there are some interesting gems in here.

Tim also continues to write on his blog, The Four Hour Blog if you’re further intrigued!