As a proud self-implementor, we have been trying to take our commitment to become a Great Game™ practitioner seriously for the last couple of years. We’ve been to the workshops, (Get in the Game™, MiniGames™, High-Involvement Planning™) and getting a lot out of each one we've attended. We’ve been training our staff in the business of business, instructing them on how to read financial statements, and have opened our books. We’ve done a few Mini-Games and are even reading the new books (which are extremely helpful for giving us insights and motivations into how to better implement The Game.)

While I am a voracious reader, I also listen to a lot of books on tape. A couple of years ago, as I first listened to The Great Game of Business on Audible on a cross-country road trip, I was captivated by Jack Stack’s rich voice as he described the transformation of his business through a totally new concept of how to run a business. Having been at the helm of a business for 28 years at that time, I thought I had seen—and tried everything. I will confess that through the years, my staff understandably would start rolling their eyes every time I launched a new initiative, planning process, or management approach that sprung from my latest read. But The Great Game of Business® was different. I asked everyone on my staff to make a priority of reading or listening to the book. I was committed to changing the very nature of our business this time, starting with training the team in financial literacy, and opening the books.