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Power Plant Employees Control Costs & Impact Bottom Line

American Electric Powers’ (AEP) Pirkey Power Plant in Hallsville, Texas, has been providing low-cost power to its customers since 1985. The plant is part of a division of AEP called Southwestern Electric Power (SWEPCO), which is composed of eleven plants over a three-state region that includes parts of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
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Catering Company Survives Tough Times by Teaching Employees to Think Like Owners

Tasty Catering began as a fast-food hot dog stand called Tasty Dawg more than 25 years ago. Founded by a trio of entrepreneurial brothers, Tom, Larry and Kevin Walter, the company, which is based in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, now serves up tasty treats at weddings, corporate meetings and conferences, social events, residential parties, special events, holiday parties, outdoor picnics, and more. Beyond its great food, Tasty has also garnered dozens of awards for its outstanding company culture.
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Family-Owned Manufacturer Improves Gross Margin with The Great Game of Business

The Kiolbassa Provision Company is a 65-year-old family-owned manufacturer of handcrafted sausage based in San Antonio, Texas. Originally started as more of a pork and beef processor, the company shifted into making sausage fulltime under the guidance of president Michael Kiolbassa, whose grandfather started the company. The company’s sausages will soon be sold in all 50 states and in Mexico.
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Financial Literacy Training Helps Agriculture Equipment Distributor Drive Out Entitlement

Jenner Sales Corp., now in its 53rd year of business, is the Case IH Agriculture Application Equipment Distributor for the states of Illinois and Indiana. Business Challenges Jenner Sales Corp. was a profitable company prior to its launch of the GGOB. However, the company’s profit sharing program had started to feel, to ownership, more like an employee expectation than an earned reward. It seemed employees really didn’t understand how the company arrived at the pool of money and what employees needed to contribute to earn their share of it. Therefore, ownership believed that if employees at the front line understood how the business made profits as well as the fact that more profit would be available for sharing if they helped grow the amount, they’d want to win together.
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3M Distributor Increases Sales when Former Teacher Takes Over & Opens the Books

Argent Tape & Label (ATL) is a manufacturer in Plymouth, Michigan, which produces pressure-sensitive labels used by industrial customers in the automotive, pharmaceutical and consumer industries. Business Challenges Lynn Perenic was a teacher, where she taught elementary education and then special education at the high school level for a total of 20 years, before she ever contemplated becoming an entrepreneur. But after her husband talked about closing ATL, which he had purchased back in 1995, because of its poor performance, Perenic stepped in to try and save the business. But with just three associates and virtually no customers, she had a difficult task ahead of her.
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An Auto Repair Shop Leverages Open-Book Management to Beat Industry Profit Margins

A mechanic by trade, Tom Bissonnette has been part of the auto body repair business in his hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, since the 1980s. It was in 2000 that the opportunity arose to purchase Parr Auto Body, a company specializing/that specialized in auto collision repairs. While the business proved successful over the next 12 years, Bissonnette saw room for improvement. While he had first come across Jack Stack’s book, The Great Game of Business, back in 1998, it was a newly hired consultant who suggested in 2012 that he implement its best practices in his own business.
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Australian Accounting Firm Increases Productivity & Engagement Using Open-Book Management

O’Connells OBM is a progressive chartered accounting firm based in Brisbane, Australia, that specializes in providing its clients with proactive tax and business advisory services. The OBM in the firm’s name is short for open-book management, which the company first embraced some 15 years ago.
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Meet us in Vegas for the 2014 ESOP Conference

Don't miss the largest ESOP conference in the world! The Great Game of Business will be there to share how we use open-book management to drive amazing results in our company ESOP. 2013 Las Vegas ESOP Conference & Trade Show: November 13 & 14, 2014 | Cesars Palace
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Aircraft Repair Company Uses Financial Forecasting to Avoid Pay Cuts

Founded in January 2000 in Fort Worth, Texas, Texas Air Composites (TAC) repairs and overhauls aircraft for airlines and other private owners all over the world.
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The Annual Gathering of Games - Featured Track Details

In our last post, we shared details from the methodology-focused tracks (Know & Teach the Rules, Follow the Action & Keep Score and Provide a Stake in the Outcome). Today, we'll continue to share highlights from the 22nd Annual Gathering of Games agenda by looking at the three featured tracks for the 2014 Conference.
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About The Great Game of Business

Our approach to running a company was developed to help close one of the biggest gaps in business: the gap between managers and employees. We call our open-book approach The Great Game of Business. What lies at the heart of The Game is a very simple proposition: The best, most efficient, most profitable way to operate a business is to give everybody in the company a voice in saying how the company is run and a stake in the outcome. Let us teach you how to develop a culture of ownership, where employees think, act and feel like owners.