Reinventing the organisation to drive better customer and employee outcomes - Interview with Ricardo Semler

Today’s episode of the Punk CX podcast features a chat I had with Ricardo Semler, a champion of radical, employee-friendly corporate democracy, a vision he successfully realised during his 40 years as CEO of Semco Partners. He went on to build Semco Style Institute (SSI) on that foundation and has shared its learnings with companies across the world in the intervening years. This chat was a bit of a fan-boy moment for me, as I read his first book, Maverick, back in the 1990s. It blew my mind then and continues to inspire me today. He joins me today to talk about a new ebook he recently published, The End of The Boss. We talk about the book, the Relevance Imperative, how today’s corporations are structurally unprepared for the forces reshaping work, particularly AI and remote autonomy, to say nothing of rebellious Gen Z and Gen Alpha talent, a new organisational architecture: the Round Pyramid, why employees should be able to hire and fire their own bosses, and the example of the Botanique Hotel & Spa, which applied the Round Pyramid in practice and what happened to customer, employee and business outcomes. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Why your contact centre cost model is broken – Interview with Robert Bradshaw of WiserOwl – and is number 600 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders who are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.