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Overcoming Talent Shortages In Manufacturing

Mar 8, 2022 by Darren Dahl 2 Comments
There was so much promise for the post-pandemic economy—especially for the manufacturing sector. Many organizations continue to see an unprecedented surge in demand for their products—levels the economy hasn’t seen for 40 years. For many, it’s been a struggle to keep up with customer orders. It’s like trying to drink out of a fire hydrant to keep up with this kind of growth. The forecasts continue to look strong, too, as retailers and dealers increasingly look to insource and onshore production from overseas. The future of manufacturing in the U.S. looks brighter than it has in decades. Yet, there’s a catch. Manufacturers now have emerging pain points to contend with. Supply chains are stretched to their limits. Ships lay docked outside ports while there aren’t enough trucks or drivers to cart products away. Millions of dollars of finished goods may sit in warehouses for months awaiting parts worth mere dollars.
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"If We Watch Our Spending, We Can Save Jobs"

Mar 3, 2022 by Darren Dahl 1 Comment
There's something special about the Midwestern town of Springfield, Missouri. It just seems to breed entrepreneurs. It's been the launching pad for household names like Bass Pro Shops and O'Reilly Auto Parts, among others that help power the nation's economy. Maybe there's something in the water. Or perhaps it's tied to the can-do attitude of generations of farmers raised in the area. While Jeff Schrag wasn't born in Springfield—he moved there in 1995 after he bought a newspaper based there, The Daily Events, a legal notice publication—he's what you might call a "serial entrepreneur." Among his many ventures, he has started a business that sells cufflinks, one that offers coloring books, and he's also rehabbed and flipped real estate.
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Top 3 Things to Consider for 2022’s Economic Slowdown

Feb 22, 2022 by Kimberly Clark 3 Comments
1. Know how your business will be impacted In 2021, industrial sectors experienced Accelerating Growth, creating crunches on capacity, exacerbating concerns surrounding the labor market, prompting a willingness to purchase raw materials at higher costs than perhaps would have otherwise been desired.
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Increasing Employee Engagement and Production Levels in A Construction Company

Feb 20, 2022 by Great Game Team 0 Comments
Historically, businesses using traditional management styles have been reluctant to give all their employees the knowledge they need to make good business decisions day in and day out as they do their jobs. Open-book management takes a much different approach. It’s all about capturing and sharing both financial and organizational knowledge with every employee and empowering them to use that knowledge to contribute to the long-term success of the organization, as well as their personal success.
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Why Humble Leaders Make the Best Leaders

Feb 17, 2022 by Michael Langhout 3 Comments
At a recent client planning session, the CEO was participating in a discussion about strategy, which led to a challenging question on the overall business model. ‘Should we remain more operationally focused, or redesign to be more outwardly “sales”-focused?’ It was an interesting question for sure, and the discussion yielded many new ideas. But the most interesting part of the exercise for me was watching the team interact with each other in an intense debate over well-established norms in the business and whether or not to continue with the status quo or disrupt and rebuild with a new business model concept. The CEO encouraged each team member to think strategically and not defend their own respective roles. He quietly encouraged each leadership team member to argue for and then against each of the critical points in the discussion. The result was a redesign of the company and a complete agreement on how they will operate going forward.
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How To Have Fun At Work (And Learn Something At The Same Time)

It feels like we’re on some kind of crazy rollercoaster ride. One day we’re riding high, and then, whoosh, we’re hit with school closings and absenteeism due to Covid, shortages of parts, and, heck, even a big ice and snowstorm to contend with. You get to the point where you think you might be too tired to duck from the next punch headed your way. When you add that we were also trying to close out our fiscal year on January 31 amidst all those challenges, it could have been enough just to wave the white flag and surrender. As anyone involved in balancing your books at year-end knows, it can be a royal pain. The pain is only made worse when you put off things during the year because of those challenges you’re forced to deal with. For example, if you ran into a supply chain logjam, you might be forced to place an emergency order—and pay a significant premium for it—which then impacts your cost and pricing structure. Or maybe you couldn’t collect on your receivables because of paperwork errors or maybe because someone was out sick. Have you seen what shipping containers cost these days? That means you wouldn’t get the cash you expected, which is the last place you ever want to be.
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Five Ways to Create a Stronger Remote Workforce Through The Great Game of Business

Feb 8, 2022 by Ivy Shelden 4 Comments
You never thought you’d be here–navigating your business through a global pandemic that has changed nearly everything about the way we work.  You’ve learned to cope with the quarantines, the safety protocols and the financial uncertainty. Still, now you’re facing one more potential pivot: the switch to a hybrid or fully remote workforce. You’re thinking: What happens when my employees are no longer together as a team? Will they lose motivation? Will communication break down? Will our bottom line suffer? Maybe you’re already experiencing some of these issues–but it doesn’t have to be this way.  The core principles of the Great Game of Business®–educating and empowering employees to think and act like owners, and engaging them by giving them a Stake in the Outcome®—can help eliminate the risk of disengagement that comes with remote work. 
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Remove the Emotions and Plan With Confidence

Feb 1, 2022 by ITR Economics 0 Comments
One of the most critical values that ITR Economics provides is removing the emotion from your business planning. Every business leader faces ever-daunting questions, such as “is this the right decision?” or “is this the right time?” or “how can I be sure?” To help with the psychological aspects of managing a business, ITR has created a roadmap based on the Business Cycle. They’ve divided the Business Cycle into four phases and have designated specific business practices for each phase.
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5 Ways to Eat Your Competition for Breakfast

Jan 27, 2022 by Jeffrey Gross 1 Comment
Peter Drucker is credited with saying, "culture eats strategy for breakfast". Even in today’s tech driven economy, a company’s human capital is still the most powerful potential competitive advantage. Great work culture is incredibly hard to build and even harder to maintain. Usually, workplace culture is measured in terms of employee engagement. The cultures I admire most built their employee engagement around these strategies below:
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Why Oversharing Information Is The Secret To Thriving In Times Of Great Uncertainty

Things were looking up there for a while, weren’t they? At least the long-term forecasts still look strong. But this omicron variant is causing us to tear our hair out, worrying about the health and safety of our people (let alone our loved ones at home). Just this past week, we saw 82 of our associates call in sick—that’s 5% of our company. Just as bad, something like 8% of our company has tested positive for the virus in January. Then, we got hit with the news that our school system was shutting down for a week or more because of the incredible wave of infections ripping through our community. That means we have parents forced to stay home or find childcare options at the last minute, which just puts enormous stress on everyone.
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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.