Bogged down with resistance to change? Having a hard time promoting your business as a promising place to work (aka hiring challenges)? Moving your business to the next level starts with a positive work culture. You can give your employees a voice and make noticeable improvements in your company’s culture (and bottom line!) by focusing on four objectives and the concept of “Culture Teams.”

At the end of the day, can you declare victory within your business if the only thing you accomplish is making a profit? For me, the answer was no, but I worked for a nonprofit - Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks. Not-for-profit organizations like ours are typically created because there is not a market for their services in the private sector. They exist for more than just making money, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether other companies exist for reasons like this as well. Some call it their “noble cause,” others call it “triple bottom line,” but typically successful open-book management companies know their “why” and have a Critical Number TM tied to it.

When you’re planning a MiniGame™, you’re most likely starting with a goal in mind, whether it’s reducing an expense, increasing a sales number or even replacing the toilet paper roll (hey, MiniGames can target any area that needs addressing!). It’s usually easy to find something you want to improve, but building a MiniGame that will drive those results takes some fun – and some finesse. We may be a two-time All-Star Award winner, but not all our early MiniGames were successful. Even a few years in, we had to step back, review and reinvent our Game play to reset and reinvigorate our results. Here are a few tricks we’ve learned along the way.

Do you wish you had more money, fewer employee issues, and the freedom to be able to go home at the end of the day without thinking about problems? Wow! Just the idea of that sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, many business owners are in tremendous debt and feel like their businesses are squeezing the life out of them. That’s how I used to feel, but I discovered that the business will provide excess cash, a peaceful work environment and personal freedom when a business is healthy and functioning as it should.

(reprinted with permission from NCEO.org) ESOPs can be an ideal business transition solution for many business owners, providing a way to preserve their legacy with employees and the community, get a fair price, retain a role in the company if they like, and get unmatched tax benefits in the process. But while ESOPs are not right for many companies, over the years, we at the NCEO have heard a lot of unconvincing or downright incorrect reasons not to do an ESOP. Unfortunately, too many business owners decide not to do an ESOP based on these bogus rationales. Here at the NCEO, our goal is not to convince anyone to implement an ESOP but to help people make a well-informed, sensible decision. With that in mind, below is a list of twelve reasons you might have heard about why not to do an ESOP that are just wrong, followed by seven very legitimate ones.

This is the third in our series of blogs on the Annual Gathering of Games, the world's largest conference on open-book management. This year marks the 26th anniversary of the event, which attracts business leaders from companies of all sizes, in all industries, from all over the world, who recognize that they can transform their businesses by valuing and elevating their greatest resource: their employees. These articles are written by Great Game® employees to highlight some of the highest rated sessions at the 2017 conference. We hope to give you a flavor of the content-rich sessions that can be found at The Gathering of Games. Click the link below to hear the entire audio recording from this breakout session.

There’s a big elephant in the room business owners need to start looking at if they haven’t already: the looming workforce shortage. While the media seemed to focus solely on the lack of jobs in recent years, the real story that’s going to impact businesses of all kinds in the coming years is the shortage of workers caused by the constant stream of Baby Boomers leaving the workforce. But what can those businesses that are already feeling the pain do about attracting new talent? Just as importantly, how can they better engage and retain the employees they already have?

This is the second in our series of weekly blogs on the Annual Gathering of Games, the world's largest conference on open-book management. This year marks the 26th anniversary of the event, which attracts business leaders from companies of all sizes, in all industries, from all over the world, who recognize that they can transform their businesses by valuing and elevating their greatest resource: their employees. These articles are written by Great Game employees to highlight some of the highest rated sessions at the 2017 conference. We hope to give you a flavor of the content-rich sessions that can be found at The Gathering of Games. Click the link below to hear the entire audio recording from this breakout session.

This is the first in our series of weekly blogs on the Annual Gathering of Games, the world's largest conference on open-book management. This year marks the 26th anniversary of the event, which attracts business leaders from companies of all sizes, in all industries, from all over the world, who recognize that they can transform their businesses by valuing and elevating their greatest resource: their employees. These articles are written by Great Game employees to highlight some of the highest rated sessions at the 2017 conference. We hope to give you a flavor of the content-rich sessions that can be found at The Gathering of Games. Click the link below to hear the entire audio recording from this breakout session.