The Boss-Employee Two-Step

For several years now I have been pressing a book into the hands of friends and strangers who show even the slightest interest in how businesses can and maybe should work.

And while I order my copies by the dozen, it is, at first glance, an embarrassing book. A 1980s trade paperback published by Time Warner, it is bound in the sort of garish, grinning cover that books written by CEOs invariably have. The boosterish title, Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace, does not help.

Maverick is the story of Semco, an industrial conglomerate based in Brazil. While largely unknown to the North American MBA set, Maverick has long been one of Latin America’s best-selling business books. In it, former Semco CEO and heir Ricardo Semler explains the crisis, gamble and resurgence of...