What is an effective way of developing a sense of ownership? Over the years, I have talked to several business owners who want their employees to think and act like owners. They want them to be engaged and passionate about their jobs and the workplace culture. They want them to enjoy coming to work. Workplace culture in an employee-owned company should come easily, right? These owners often see setting up an ESOP as a way to change the organization’s culture and instill the aforementioned traits of thinking and acting like an owner. Two or three years later, I talk to some of the same owners, who once saw the ESOP as a cure for their cultural problems and now blame the ESOP and the employees for their inability to create an ownership culture. They say: “I started this ESOP thinking that it would make all my employees care about their jobs. The dream of an ESOP ownership culture hasn’t done anything. In fact, their behavior is worse now.” One would ask: “Why is it worse?” The answer is that these owners were using leadership to manage employees before the ESOP, and after the ESOP, they quit leading and managing them at all because they thought the ESOP would do this for them. I’ve heard of several cases like this. So, if the ESOP is not going to be the magic potion, what is?

Giving employees equity is one thing. Getting employees to think and act like owners is an entirely different story. That’s why SRC Holdings Corporation has an Ownership Culture Committee (OCC) responsible for challenging each company to stay true to the principles and practices of The Game and spreading the culture of ownership to every employee in the SRC family of companies. With two major changes in leadership, a dip in the core business, and no sales manager, SRC Logistics, a division of SRC, knew 2019 would hold its challenges. In order to meet their annual plan and the metrics they needed to have a successful business year, their five-member Ownership Culture Committee helped facilitate MiniGames™ across all departments, provide educational trainings, promote cost savings and revenue opportunities, and ultimately close the gaps and have a successful 2019 year. Here’s how SRC Logistics turned their year around:

If you approached an employee at your company and asked them who creates the financial numbers in your company, what would they say? Odds are, they’d probably point to the accounting department. Sure, accounting has a lot to do with your company financials, but they don’t really create them. Your employees create the financials through the decisions they make and the actions they take. So how do you help your employees understand their part in creating the numbers and how their actions can affect those numbers? We recommend you follow the five golden rules of teaching employees about company financials:

If you are reading this and haven't already "opened the books" to share company financials with your employees, my guess is it's because you are scared. What are your real concerns about open-book management? Financial transparency in business is a concept so new, so counter to the way business has always been done, no wonder it scares people. Just the thought of opening the books is followed by a whole list of what-ifs. The thing is - it's not actually that scary when you break it down. Here are our answers when people hit us with the what-ifs:

The word profit can mean many things to many people—especially in our current political climate. But for an increasing number of folks, profit has become a negative term—a dirty word—which has huge implications for the economic sustainability for businesses across the world. At a time when company values and purpose have gone mainstream, and when even the Business Roundtable has begun prioritizing stakeholders over shareholders, the basics of what goes into making a profit has come under fire.

At the Great Game of Business®, one of the most common questions we coaches get tends to go along these lines: “I’d love to open the books and share the numbers with my people, but I’m just not confident they have the education or training to understand them. How can I teach them the financials effectively?” In starting on the path of open-book management, many business and organizational leaders worry about this. Most employees at most companies have not had formal business education, and many may lack much formal education at all. So, it’s not unreasonable to wonder whether most employees will ever be able to understand your finances and business model. When my clients ask a question like this, I like to ask them in return: “Do any of your employees like baseball?”

Charities are not like organizations in the private sector because they can’t just sell more widgets or raise their prices to improve the “bottom” line. The reality is that they have inflows and outflows just like any other business and do have a “bottom line", it just can’t be called the “p-word” (profit!).

When the company does well, our professional lives go forward. But when the company doesn’t do well, eventually, it will impact the employees. The most common employee response to a company failure is “we never saw this coming!” Over the last 10-20 years, we have watched large, successful U.S. companies enter into failure mode. It constantly hits our media networks. It’s painful to see the impact of this demise on the people who have committed their professional life to the failing company. The failure of the corporation never seems to be “fair” to these employees. So, it’s appropriate to propose that the company’s success has to be important to the employees.

Amy’s Ice Creams’ workforce is made up primarily of millennials, most of which are seasonal employees. In the short time these younger workers are with Amy's, this Great Game All-Star company maximizes engagement in order to make a lasting impact on employees' futures, as well as the success of the business. Take a look at what Marketing and Communications Director, Aaron Clay, has to say about the company's fun, fast-paced and positive Huddles combined with open-book management, and his four guidelines for enhancing engagement in your team's Huddles.

Creating an informed and engaged workforce doesn't happen overnight...and isn't sustainable without the dedication and focus of the whole team. To help get your Game off on the right foot in the new year, here's a list of must-know tips from our best blogs to help The Game excel at your company.