Speaker: Ricardo Semler
TEDGlobal 2014
Date: October 2014
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Description from TED website:
What if your job didn’t control your life? Brazilian CEO Ricardo Semler practices a radical form of corporate democracy, rethinking everything from board meetings to how workers report their vacation days (they don’t have to). It’s a vision that rewards the wisdom of workers, promotes work-life balance — and leads to some deep insight on what work, and life, is really all about. Bonus question: What if schools were like this too?
My Review / Notes / Thoughts
This talk is the type you have to listen to a few times because there is SO much packed into it!
He talks about his business and changes that they’ve made over the years so that people can enjoy life in the present, versus when they are retired (where they may not have the money or physical ability to do those things).
While all that is extremely interesting, I would rather focus on the latter half of his talk where he started discussing how they began applying what they’d learned to schools and education.
In these schools, they’ve taken the role of the teacher and broken it into two parts. The first role is more of a tutor, not to teach, but to look after the children. The second role is where the instruction comes in. They want people with passion and expertise, and they’ve been using senior citizens to fill this role.
The instruction is set up to teach the students the material by doing … so they are learning through application.
I find the whole concept extremely interesting but I’m not really sure how to convey it all to you all (my readers). I’m still absorbing and processing all the information.
However, I do think that this would be a great talk for students in Business and Education. He’s presented two fundamentally different ways to run a business and to conduct education.
I believe students could gain a lot out of this talk through civil discussion and debate in the classroom.
Have you watched the video yet? What are your thoughts? How could you see this video being used in class? What types of questions or prompts might you present your students with to get them engaged and thinking about the topics? Let me know!
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Semler’s Book:
Until next time … live long life-learner!