Back in mid-March 2020, Chris Hurley, the co-owner and CEO of Russell & Abbott Heating and Cooling in Maryville, TN, was in a dark place. The COVID-19 pandemic had begun its rampage and the country was beginning to shut down in response.

My GGOB Story  The year was 2011, and I was living it up as a young single 20-something in Springfield, MO. I was a proud community college graduate holding an associates degree in ‘electronic media production’ with a slight obsession with attending large-scale music festivals.  You know the ones, Coachella, Bonnaroo, The HangOut Music Fest. I lived for them and I was always planning out which one I would attend next, always keeping in mind what my small hourly call center wage would support. 

    Every October, we conduct our second sales-and-marketing meeting of the year (the first is held in June)—a ritual we’ve continued every year since 1983. The sales teams from each of our divisions make presentations to everyone inside the company—including our board of directors—and we ask our people to vote on their confidence in those plans. For us, this process—what we call High-Involvement Planning—is the lynchpin of how we build a true culture of engagement inside our business.

  # 1 - Recognition and Respect Great employees continue to prove themselves every day. Recognition and respect from peers and leadership further solidifies the bond between a great employee and the company. Respected employees stay because they would have to start over at ground zero at a new company. Once again working to earn recognition and respect from a new employer. Respected employees: help set and maintain the productive rhythm of the company. mentor others. step up when needed without being asked. have unique talents and expertise that are obvious. In return, the great employee's work and contribution earns them recognition and respect at all levels of the company, especially leadership. Again, the key word is "earned."

  Each of these companies; Dragon Army, English Tea Shop, Evergreen Cooperatives, Experity, and Goodall Homes are part of a growing community of Great Game™ companies who have reimagined capitalism as a transformational force for good. Each year, the Great Game Community recognizes companies like these who have the courage to do business differently. They are using the power of business to transform their associate's lives and the communities which they serve, for the better. They are part of a movement that's trying to 'Change the Game'.

  There is a secret weapon in the fight against COVID-19: America’s urgent care clinics. While Americans have long relied on these walk-in clinics for help in overcoming ailments like the flu and mononucleosis, the fear of COVID has kept people away from healthcare centers across the country. Lacking adequate personal protection equipment, urgent care center visit volumes, decreased 50% almost overnight.

If you have implemented The Great Game of Business® and are making progress in your company, you might be wondering what the next step is. How do you sustain The Game and keep your team engaged in the long-run? Here are some tips and tools to keep your current staff energized, and bring new employees up to speed on your Great Game™ culture and practices:

Companies with the best people will dominate their market by 2020. Jack Stack has been saying it throughout this year as SRC focused on their 2019 Critical Number™: "People." But how do you attract, and maybe more importantly, retain the best employees? By providing them with more than a day job, but a career where they're learning, growing, and contributing to the success of the organization.

A few years back, we hosted our Annual Gathering of Games conference with the theme, “The Wisdom of the Crowd.” The event has always been a great place to learn from other open-book practitioners, and specifically remember this Gathering's opening keynote speaker James Surowiecki speaking about his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, which discusses how the collective wisdom of a group can outweigh the wisest person within the crowd. I was conflicted. How can the average of a group of contributors yield a greater result than that of the highest member in the group? For me, this was a hard-to-understand concept that seemed to severely oppose my traditional, mathematical thinking.

For the first time in our history, we have five generations in the workforce, each generation bringing a different perspective and their own set of expectations. Millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce, and employers must rethink their workforce norms. As diversity grows with this generational shift, employers across the globe are challenged to adopt best practices for building and maintaining a generational inclusive workforce to attract and retain top talent in their organization. In order to meet the needs of today’s workforce, here are four best practices to transform your work culture and build a generational inclusive workforce:

A strong corporate recognition culture motivates employees as well as attracts and retains top talent—a win for the company and a win for the employee. There’s nothing we like better at The Great Game of Business®! A recognition culture doesn’t happen by accident and it doesn’t happen overnight. Looking at best practices and tips can save you the trouble of reinventing the wheel—here are 6 best practices for you to consider when creating a recognition culture in your organization. 

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: