What a 9-year-old Can Teach Us About Life One Saturday morning, I found myself standing and watching a Little League baseball game. I had a mask on my face and was safely isolated away from anyone else. It was so weird. But I enjoyed being outside in the sun, hearing the familiar sounds of a ball popping into leather and the pings of the bat when hitters made contact. It almost felt like the start of something new.

Success happens frequently when playing the Great Game of Business®. Whether it is winning a MiniGame™ or hitting your goals, there are plenty of opportunities to accelerate these results. To be even more successful, what we say when things go right is important (Gable, Gonzaga & Strachman, 2006). After a success, there are four types of responses:

Employee engagement has become a buzzword for business leaders. Everyone wants their business to have it. Yet a 2018 Gallup survey found only one-third of the work force says they feel engaged at work. Corey Rosen from the National Center for Employee Ownership shares his thoughts on how.

One of the main concerns business owners have when first introduced to open-book management is related to what information will be shared. They fear that revealing details of the company’s financial picture will create stress and tension within the organization. For example, owners are often concerned about whether employee salary information is to be revealed. They even worry about the competition gaining access to their financials.

Inspired by Rich Armstrong & Steve Baker's book, Get in the Game: How to Create Rapid Financial Results and Lasting Cultural Change. The original Critical Number™ for Jack Stack and the people of SRC was obvious. With a debt to equity ratio of 89:1, they needed to make the bank loan payment. If they didn’t do that, nothing else mattered— their jobs would be gone. Debt was their weakness and they needed to drive it out of their business. Jack used that one common goal to rally people, get their buy-in and educate them. Not only why it was critical, but how they could influence it. Armed with a common goal people could understand and buy into, Jack could teach debt to equity, along with all the related financial education in their weekly Huddles. And after a year and fifty-two lessons, you can be sure they learned it.

I’d like to tell you a story. Let me begin with a disclaimer, it’s not about winning big or how The Great Game of Business® instantly made us hugely profitable and loads of fun. It’s a terrible story about losing. Also, I have not been involved in open-book management or The Great Game of Business very long. Truth be told, I’m about as green as anyone can be. Here’s the 10 second backstory – AMBAC International has been manufacturing precision engine components for over 100 years. The men and women on the shop floor know what they’re doing. I’ll tell anyone they’re the best in the world, and I’ve got the data to back that up. But, the shop floor wasn’t really connected to the ‘business’ and everyone suffered from poor corporate performance as a result. In fact, we were in real danger of losing the company.

There is a secret weapon in the fight against COVID-19: America’s urgent care clinics. While Americans have long relied on these walk-in clinics for help in overcoming ailments like the flu and mononucleosis, the fear of COVID has kept people away from healthcare centers across the country. Lacking adequate personal protection equipment, urgent care center visit volumes, decreased 50% almost overnight.

We all know some version of the line that appears in the iconic film, The Godfather, where Michael Corleone says to his brother, Sonny: “It’s not personal…it’s strictly business.” Turns out that the phrase was reportedly coined in real life by a guy named Otto Berman, who also happened to be an accountant for organized crime families. With a checkered origin like this, why has this phrase become so wildly accepted?

Improve Your Year-End Outlook—Through Data-driven, High-Involvement Planning & Strategy Development Every business out there has been impacted by economic conditions in some way. While some have been forced to shut their doors, others have seen demand spike for their products or services. The devastating speed with which disruption has hit forced companies to make dramatic adjustments to cope and survive—or even to keep up and thrive. But short-term thinking will only get you so far. It’s now time to adjust your sights and start to look further out. It’s time to move past the uncertainty of today and begin thinking about what the marketplace is telling you about what your organization faces tomorrow.

When's the best time to start playing The Great Game of Business®? For SRC, it didn’t come down to a choice. They began playing Great Game™ back in 1983 out of desperation. It was a Hail Mary resort to save their business. They used the system to claw their way out of an 89-to-1 debt-to-equity hole. In the years since, many other companies have also turned to The Great Game of Business system as a last resort. Most of us are more open to change during tough times. What’s less common, though, is companies embracing the system during good times. Why fix something when it isn’t broken, right?