Co-authored by Scott Ogeka Without employee engagement, strategic planning can deliver questionable results. This sentiment often exists because companies lack a simplified process and a buy-in from informed employees. High-Involvement Planning is a key element of open-book management at SRC, West Paw Design and many other companies. This process does not require an outside strategic planning consultancy to help your company; instead it is a planning system that works inside the company.

We hear it over and over again in training – the best way to retain and use information we’ve learned is to practice. And although many participants appear to want to slink under the table when trainers suggest role-playing, it is one of the most effective ways to practice using new skills in a safe setting. To that end, in the Zingerman’s Facilitation class, a quarter of the 2-hour class is devoted to a facilitation role-playing. It’s a chance for facilitators to practice three specific tools they’ve just learned: • Active listening • Summarizing • Interjecting

If you’ve seen any of the recent research on what motivates employees in the workplace, you’ll run across several repeating items, such as “having the ability to make an impact,” “recognition for a job well done” and “the opportunity to progress in the company.” A motivating and engaging workforce is one way to ensure that you have a team committed to driving the success of your company.

Most organizations deal with change grudgingly. Change is something we rarely looked forward to, and it’s generally not considered part of the routine operational activity. Rather, it's an exception to it, often about as welcomed as a root canal. Most folks prefer to have as little change as possible, and when it comes up, they grind their teeth and do their best to work through it with minimal pain.

About Innotec The founders of Innotec, a manufacturer based in Zeeland, Michigan, wove the open-book principles of The Great Game of Business into the DNA of their business right from the get-go in 1992. “We based our organization on the same practices that SRC uses,” says Nick deVries, Innotec’s head of finance. “We want to give ownership and the information needed to make decisions directly to the people doing the work.”

Every entrepreneur exits. It’s one of the few absolute certainties in business. Assuming you’ve built a viable company, you can choose when and how you exit, but you can’t choose whether. It’s going to happen. You can count on it.

Thinking of attendingthe Gathering of Games Conference in September? Great! It promises to be a great one, as this year’s theme is “Harnessing the Wisdom of the Crowd.” Let’s see what else you have to look forward to at this year’s conference:

We’ve seen countless articles on why managers and business leaders need to focus on engaging employees–not only is it generally an important predictor of company performance–but it leads to stronger communication, higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, and increased productivity and profitability. These benefits are widely recognized in organizations running open-book management systems; they encourage higher levels of engagement by their very nature.

Think back to when you first opened your business or launched your company. All your hopes and dreams centered on having happy, returning, high-spending customers, right? Your first few customers offered you a great chance to learn how to interact with them to create a great customer experience. As your business grew, so did the amount of people buying from you, and with each new customer you earned, something else happened…you needed more employees! That’s when it all started to change. You learned just how much employee engagement matters, and the more people you hired, the more crucial that realization was to your businesses success.

Coming up on April 21-23, 2015, the Great Game of Business team will hit the road for Denver, Colorado, for the National Center for Employee Ownership’s annual Employee Ownership Conference. The NCEO Employee Ownership Conference is the premiere gathering on employee ownership, and the NCEO’s annual conference provides an ideal opportunity to learn, network and share knowledge with others in the employee ownership world.