Hanging on to your elephant’s tail?

by

Elephant's Tail_000016874894XSmallWhat on earth?

I was re-reading Ricardo Semler’s “Maverick” the other day, when I was
tickled by his question, “What would you rather have, the tail of an elephant
or an entire ant?”

Of course it helps to know the
context. After all, unless you are the elephant or an old-school maharajah
wanting an elephant’s tail to keep the flies off you, there cannot be much
demand for elephant tails!

Actually, the quote comes at the end of the chapter in which Semler talks about
profit-sharing and the fact that employees at Semco are entitled to 23% of the
profits. Effectively he was the principle “donor” in this arrangement, and he
conceded that he felt 23% was “awfully high.” However, he explains his decision
to go along with it by saying, “But I kept telling myself I stood to make at
least as much money in partnership with a motivated workforce as I would as the
sole beneficiary of the fruits of less inspired workers.”

Wow. Here’s someone who really understands the power of ownership and the
glorious, potent effect it has on employee engagement.

His point is that employee ownership is what unleashes the true economies of
scale and unless you have a fair and equitable basis for sharing profits you
are basically operating with at least one hand tied behind your back. And, in
case you think this is latent or blatant socialism, he makes the point
elsewhere that “Few ideas are as capitalist as profit-sharing.”  

So where do you stand? Do you want to hang on to your elephant’s tail, or do
you want the ant?

16 thoughts on “Hanging on to your elephant’s tail?”

  12. I have been surfing on-line more than 3 hours ass of late, yet I never found any fascinating article like yours. It’s pretty value sufficient for me. In my view, if all webmasters and bloggers made excellent content as you did, the web shall be much more useful than ever before.

Leave a comment