Challenge
Before playing the Great Game of Business®, WEBIT’s founder and President Eric Rieger was looking for help. “I didn’t feel like our team was fully engaged,” he says, “I also believed it was due to our top down management style which didn’t give our team the full picture, nor did it empower anyone to make things better.”
Solution
When Rieger’s coach, Doug Diamond, suggested that he read Jack Stack’s book, it had an immediate impact since Rieger’s grandfather had worked down the road from International Harvester in Melrose Park, IL, the same company SRC and the Great Game of Business spun out of. “I remember going with my father to pick my grandfather up from work. I know the area very well and the whole message and story of SRC and how they saved the company and turned things around really resonated with me” he says. Rieger guided his team to start playing the Great Game of Business in August 2016.
Results
While Rieger had some accounting experience from his college days, he admits that opening the books and teaching financial literacy through weekly huddles was the biggest eye opener for both him and his team. Scoreboarding and High-Involvement Planning™ in particular have had huge positive impacts in how the business is run.
Providing financial literacy training and opening the books also gave Rieger’s team deeper context about why certain decisions were being made—or not made—based on protecting the bottom line. “We’re in our third full year of playing the Game and it’s the people that motivate me,” says Rieger. “When I was introduced to Great Game™, I saw it as the missing piece of the puzzle in our organization. We had some smart people, but they weren’t able to connect the dots on how their jobs impacted not only our business, but the business of the clients we serve. The culture has done a complete 180 degrees since then.”
“The Great Game has positively impacted me in several ways. First, it's the first time ever that I've been invited to see my employer's financials and feel like I can make a direct impact on our success and see how the efforts can improve the bottom line. Second, being in a financial role but not having the accounting background, I have learned a great deal about the P&L and how each account plays a major role. Third, and last, in our company it has brought us together, no matter what our role here, in a way that no other company has before. Weekly, we gather and examine the costs. It may seem like some people are not outwardly showing an interest, but I feel that they are just processing it all inside and may be too timid to speak up for fear of looking foolish. That isn't because anyone would make them feel that way, but rather just human nature.” ~ Rachel Palm, Controller
MiniGame™ Spotlight
While the WEBIT team took quickly to playing MiniGames to address threats and weaknesses in the business—one game helped them get caught up on their documentation they create for their clients while another was targeted at identifying potential new hires—they’ve admittedly struggled since to connect team members’ roles and departmental KPIs with their impact on net profit. “Some of the MiniGames are overly complicated or have scoreboards designed where you can’t tell if we’re winning or not or even what the end goal is,” says Rieger.
“The GGOB it has taught me so much, including how every small percentage impacts our daily lives both personally and professionally. It makes you think about what is most important in our lives. We can accomplish anything with a set plan and knowing what area in our career we can make the most impact. It also showed me how to count on my teammates to direct our goal in the same direction as a team. In the process we are also breaking down those secret walls that should not be up in the first place.” ~Omar Ortega. Sr. Field Engineer
What’s Next?
Aside from a commitment to improve how they approach their MiniGames, Rieger also notes the team added an ESOP target component as a stretch goal beginning in 2018. “Rather than continuing to just talk about it with nothing tangible,” he says, “I wanted to put it in writing and track it so it would become a real thing. We still have it in our 2019 plan, and it is being tracked on a giant white board wall we have in our training room so that it is at the top of everyone’s mind.”
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