Maverick! by Ricardo Semler reveals the success story of SEMCO, which made a turn-around from being an ailing company to an organization that reaped huge profits notwithstanding the high inflation. Semler reveals how he redefined the rules of management and empowered his employees to make their own rules at the workplace, making them independent of the management. It reveals the story of how the managers in the organization decided their own pay structure and perquisites. Semler further explains that there was no code of conduct in the company and no authority. Semler threw open all the doors and ensured that meetings were held only when they were extremely essential. Correspondences within the organization were kept to a bare minimum, and the workers at the production units set their own targets while ensuring that these were met. The book reveals all these and more, and shows its readers how all the above steps taken by SEMCO turned it into one of the best companies in South America and Brazil.

Ricardo Semler took over SEMCO from his father when he was 19 years old. The company was on the threshold of bankruptcy, but went on to generate an income of $160 million in 2000. Semler has been lauded for his unique manner of management, which reaped astounding levels of success for the company, in turn turning it into a role model for other companies. He has also written other books like The Seven-Day Weekend, The Seven-Day Weekend: A Better Way To Work In The 21st Century, and The Seven-day Weekend: A Manifesto for Radical Workplace Change.