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.

Sometimes it can be hard to capture and maximize co-workers’ engagement levels during a huddle week in and week out. Increasing and maintaining focus and engagement should be a constant goal for any huddle leader. Take a look at these five easy-to-implement steps to create the ideal atmosphere for truly productive huddles.

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.

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.

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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A Stake in the Outcome: Should You Consider an ESOP? Maybe so, if it kills two birds with one stone. It’s fundamental: to play the Great Game successfully, employees need to have a stake in the outcome. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine why they would go to all the extra trouble to help the company boost its performance. But what’s the best way to provide that?

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.

Tim Kerrigan has long been a believer in the power of open-book management and The Great Game of Business to turn around the performance of a company. In fact, it was during his first stint working for Stalcop, a manufacturer of cold-formed metals based in Thorntown, Indiana, that he helped pave the way for the company to begin sharing financial information among its 75 employees.

Should you sell your company? It’s a question many business owners will eventually face. But just as vexing might be the added notion of: whom should you sell your business to? One alternative that continues to gain in popularity is to sell your business to an ESOP, or employee stock ownership plan. It’s estimated that there are now some 11,500 ESOPs operating today, which account for some 13.7 million participants – or 10% of the entire U.S. workforce.