In order to get the most out of your MiniGame™, it's essential to clearly communicate all elements of the MiniGame to the players to ensure that everyone is on the same page, has a line of sight toward the goal, can easily tell if they're winning or losing, and who's accountable. GUY Engineering, a professional services firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma, presented an excellent example of a MiniGame at the "Show Me Your MiniGame" session at the 26th Annual Gathering of Games. Their MiniGame hits all the essential MiniGame elements: establishing a specific, timely, achievable goal through a MiniGame, making the information available for everyone, motivating their team with fun and memorable prizes, and rallying everyone around the goal to achieve results.

Transparency is key to playing The Great Game of Business®, but it raises concerns for many folks new to the open-book world. Does transparency mean sharing everyone’s salaries? Will competitors know our confidential information? Will transparency make my company vulnerable? It can be scary to pull back the curtain. But practiced skillfully, transparency is part of a formula for success rather than a risk for overexposure. Take a look at our top tips on business transparency and practicing GGOB.

At the Gathering of Games conference each year, the open-book community honors and celebrates the remarkable achievements of companies from around the globe that have fully embraced the principles of open-book management and The Great Game of Business®, and demonstrated outstanding results. We are excited to celebrate the 19th Annual All-Star Award Team. This team of All-Stars represents the companies who stand out as the best of the best in open-book management:

Essential Ingredients was founded in May 1996 in Augusta, GA. This cosmetic chemical and supply distributor has been 100% employee-owned since 2011, after a long history of keeping the financial information and challenges locked away for only management to see. There was one problem: the employees had never had any input or understanding of the company financials, and the financial downturn that followed the ESOP launch proved it. Although an ESOP is a great way to give associates a stake in the outcome® of the company, is a sense of ownership enough? Essential Ingredients quickly learned that an employee culture and ownership mindset among the employees may be even more impactful. The Great Game™ has been the turning point that helped all EI associates think and act like the owners they are and see tremendous results impacting revenue growth, the company's ownership culture, savings equating to more than $750K in sales, and earned EI a spot on the 2018 All-Star Team.

Part of the “secret sauce” in playing The Great Game of Business is developing a consistent Huddle rhythm that includes forward forecasting your income statement by "line owners," or people close to the numbers that have responsibility for reporting each line of the P & L. The level at which associates embrace this practice varies across Huddle team members—some take it very seriously, while others devote little or no time to this critical process. As a business coach who has been a part of hundreds, if not thousands, of Huddles, I've learned what to listen for in a forecast. When I hear phrases like these below, it alerts me to dig a little deeper and ask questions of the line owner to promote a better thought-out and more accurate forecast:

As I was growing up on the shop floors of manufacturing plants, I was constantly bombarded with best practices that had names like total quality management, management by objectives and lean manufacturing. The idea was that the company’s management was trying to make us more productive and efficient. If one person could run a machine and still have time to stand around, we would give him two more machines to run. That was breakthrough thinking, essentially operating those two extra machines for free since we increased the productivity of this worker.

Global Recovery Corp, an engine and part supplier for the agricultural, highway trucking, industrial and automotive sectors, has seen the benefits of opening the books firsthand as a result of their dedication to the Great Game of Business® methodology. In addition to MiniGames™ like their recent $100K+ MiniGame featured on the GGOB Blog, GRC regularly practices the Huddle Cycle, rewards and recognition, and the High-Involvement Planning™ process to maximize engagement and involvement among their staff. Here are some of the most recent advancements in their Game that have helped them double their planned PBT for the first quarter at 55% above plan.

Every day brings a confusing mix of news about the economy. It can be tough to gauge how things are trending. Just when things look like they might calm down enough for everyone to get back to business, a trade war escalates or economists decide to lower their forecasts for future growth, or most recently a pandemic hits. It's interesting that when 60 economists where surveyed by the Wall Street Journal they expect the next downturn in either 2020 or, more likely, 2021. I guess they didn't foresee the pandemic either or they might have leaned more heavily on the 2020 wager. Now that you have weathered the shock of recession caused by the pandemic, all this turmoil should serve as a kind of alarm—a red alert to take action. If times are good in your business right now or in the foreseeable future, you should be putting plans in place so that you’ll be able to handle the next inevitable downturn to come, which historically happens about every 10 years or so. That’s where playing The Great Game of Business® can help. Here are four tips on how to prepare your organization to handle future turmoil:

Excerpted from The Great Game of Business. The Great Fear #2 Is It Competitors You Fear—Or Your Own Employees? Sad to say, a lot of companies hide their financials not because they're afraid of their competitors, but because they're afraid of their employees. They don't think people will understand the numbers, and there's some truth to that. If you don't show employees how to use financial information as a tool to help the company, they might well use it as a weapon against the company.

These three Great Game® videos illustrate an overview and the why behind Great Game methodology, highlight the origins of open-book management & the Great Game of Business®, and give a live example of one of our fundamental practices: the Huddle Cycle. Check them out to see how GGOB instills Lasting Cultural Change while promoting Rapid Financial Results™ in organizations across the globe.