If you are just getting started with The Great Game of Business, let me begin by saying that last year I was you: sitting in the audience at The Gathering of Games, at the beginning of our Great Game journey. Fast forward a year, and we are a 2018 All-Star Rookie of the Year finalist.

Everybody loves a great story. So what’s yours? The benefits of good storytelling ripple out from gaining exposure to new customers, partners, and even employees—all of whom may be inspired to join your cause. Your story should be part of your brand and, at a minimum, be part of your website. But you don’t have to stop there. You can also use your story to connect with the media, or as an internal tool to help on-board new employees to help them understand what your company culture is all about.

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.”

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.

What if each of us in a leadership role simply made a point of working to make hope happen for the people we work with every single day? Within a few weeks, hope levels would have certainly gone up. By the end of a year, we’d have hope deeply embedded in the workplace culture; the climate of the organization couldn’t help but be significantly sunnier than it would have been before you started.

This is NOT a regurgitation of the obvious reasons great employees stay. Because great employees show up, deliver results and consistently go above and beyond to support the company, they could easily jump ship for a better job offer, or, if bold enough, strike out on their own. But they don't.

In 2007, we rolled out the Zingerman’s 2020 Vision with much fanfare. As the written picture of what success would look like for our organization, we included such lofty headers as "Radically Better Service," "An Education Destination," "Changing Our World" and ... "We Put the F U in Fun." In the year 2020, Zingerman’s is planning to have increased the level of fun at work by at least 380%!

In the April 2017 issue of Forbes magazine, SRC Holdings, Inc. and The Great Game of Business were honored with an impressive six-page spread titled “Gaming the System: How One Manufacturing Company Saved Itself With Radical Transparency And Created A Slew Of Blue-Collar Millionaires.”

No doubt your company’s top executive has “CEO” written on his or her business card. But should it? If our title really reflects the role we play in the company, then the CEO’s title should instead read Chief Culture Officer.

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.