Historically, businesses using traditional management styles have been reluctant to give all their employees the knowledge they need to make good business decisions day in and day out as they do their jobs. Open-book management takes a much different approach. It’s all about capturing and sharing both financial and organizational knowledge with every employee and empowering them to use that knowledge to contribute to the long-term success of the organization, as well as their personal success. The benefits of knowledge sharing are numerous, and here are just a few:

In more than 35 years practicing The Great Game of Business® at SRC, as well as three decades helping thousands of companies implement The Game in their own companies, we have determined the fastest, most efficient and most reliable path to Rapid Financial Results and Lasting Cultural Change™ follows a set process.  We honed and developed the 10-Step Approach to GGOB Implementation to guide companies implementing The Great Game of Business in their organizations. 

As business leaders, we care deeply about employee engagement, but we can’t operationalize a culture of engagement by ourselves. Without a strategy for scaling it across the business, it’s tough to move the needle. As my own business has grown, I’ve realized that the best thing we can do for our employees is to focus on the top two or three actions that will have the greatest impact—and hold our people-leaders or “trusted lieutenants” accountable as owners of those initiatives.

You’ve likely experienced people who occupy leadership positions and people who are leaders. There’s quite a difference. People who only occupy the position use power to get what they think is needed. Their use of questions often includes blame or demands control. Perhaps you’ve heard this one: “Don’t you agree, or is there something you didn’t understand?” People who are true leaders do the opposite. They ask questions to get people thinking about and owning the results of their work and the collective results of the company.

We love to see and hear the inside stories of companies putting the principles and practices of The Great Game of Business® to work in their organizations, which is why we love to find videos by and about Great Game practitioners! As we revealed at the 2018 Gathering of Games Conference, we have goal to impact 10 million lives in the next 10 years in the #sharonthedream campaign. Here are three of our favorite videos representing three very different stories of how the Great Game has made a difference across the globe...

“Engagement” has become such a huge buzzword in our society that some CEOs and managers no longer even want to talk about it! But don’t be fooled—this topic isn’t going anywhere. With research organization Gallup reporting that a staggering 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged in the workplace… we have our work cut out for us.

Huddles are daily or weekly meetings that drive employee engagement and serve as a self-correcting measure to keep your company on the path toward achieving its goals. Huddles are the linchpin of any successful open-book implementation, but if you find engagement and understanding are low in your organization, you’ve learned an important lesson: Huddles can’t do it alone. In order to foster cultural adoption and high involvement in the planning and execution of your organization’s goals, you’ve got to make the process accessible to your team. Here are three keys for reaching your team and driving their participation:

Individuals in the workplace need to feel appreciated in order to enjoy their job, do their best work, have positive work relationships and stay with their organization long-term. The key ingredient in meaningful, significant, and effective appreciation is individualization—expressing appreciation in the recipient’s preferred “language.” Varying the ways company leadership communicates appreciation will improve chances of hitting the mark, so we've compiled 10 easy ways your leaders can show appreciation to any associate:

An open-door policy refers to the practice of business or organizational leaders leaving their doors open so that employees feel welcome to stop by and meet informally, ask questions, or discuss matters that have been weighing on their minds. These days, with open office environments, co-working spaces and remote team members working around the globe, the “open-door policy” is more metaphorical than ever before. The equivalent of walking through a physical open door in many organizations is now sending a text message, a direct message on Facebook or Slack, an instant message on Skype, or a ping on Basecamp. Regardless of whether the interruption is through an actual door or a digital door, the theory is that an organization uses such openness to build a culture of trust, collaboration, communication, and respect regardless of an individual’s position in the hierarchy.

One Sentence Engagement? Is it truly possible to condense the science of employee engagement into a single sentence? It is and I’m about to convince you of that. But first I need to explain why I’m taking this extreme exercise in reductionism. Studying leadership and employee engagement has been a passion of mine for the last couple of decades. As an entrepreneur, I used engagement to chase and eventually catch a Best Place to Work award. As an author, one book on engagement somehow turned into three. One speech turned into a global tour. And this article on engagement is number one hundred and something. I know of no topic that is more important to the long-term success of a business than engagement.

While the percentage of engaged employees in the US is higher than it has ever been, according to Gallup more than 50% of employees are unengaged: “they may be generally satisfied but are not cognitively and emotionally connected to their work and workplace; they will usually show up to work and do the minimum required but will quickly leave their company for a slightly better offer.”   What’s worse—13% are actively disengaged employees who, in addition to being poor performers who exerted minimal effort, are four times more likely to leave their organization than the average employee.

This is an employee engagement message from the heart. I’m doing my best to strip away HR-speak, academic jargon, and journalistic style in an attempt to actually reach crazy-busy front-line managers who’ve heard it all before. It’s my vain attempt to actually influence someone. Despite the best intentions of so many, the truth about employee engagement isn’t getting out. You need to understand…