Do you feel like your leadership team is finally ready to take the leap and open the books? But, you're worried some of your team aren't as enthusiastic as you hoped they would be? If you’re ready to start sharing your financial and operational information with employees, but you get the sense they’re just not ready yet, there could be some very logical – and common – reasons why. Today we discuss the top four reasons employees aren't ready to jump on the open-book management bandwagon. Maybe there's one or two that apply to your team.

January 30, 2006, was my first day on the job with Central States Manufacturing. During my initial on-boarding process I was given a copy of a book called The Great Game of Business® and was told to "write a book report” on what I thought the book was about. My new employer handed me my first task before the discussion about the companies health benefits, before showing me the videos on forklift safety and blood-borne pathogens, even before they'd gotten all my employee details logged. I’m not completely sure they had my social security card yet! It was THAT important to them. At the time, I had virtually no idea the impact of reading that book and working for a company like Central States would have on my life over the next 14 years. I'm here to tell you about how that book report completely redirected and changed my life.

Deciding to implement a business system like open-book management is not something business owners take lightly. It's a powerful business tool that takes time, energy and commitment to follow through and keep going if you want to see the benefits. There's two ways to implement: Do it yourself - aka "Self Implementation". Hire business coaches to help. If you’ve been following the Great Game™ blog for a while, it's likely you've come across a few articles detailing each of these options. If you’re considering a DIY approach to getting started with open-book management, here are a few things to consider during the process.

For more than 25 years, we’ve helped thousands of companies implement open-book management to its fullest capacity. Along the way, we’ve developed a list of common mistakes companies make while using transparency and open-book management in their organization. If you think you are not executing open-book management correctly, or are not seeing the results you expected, then you may be making one of these four common errors:

You've heard the Great Game of Business® is about transforming your business to achieve Rapid Financial Results and Lasting Cultural Change™. But, you might be wondering: what results do our real practitioners experience? We've pulled together some of the amazing results and transformation from our 2019 All-Star champions. The principles of Great Game™ are time-tested to produce amazing results like these below. Could this be you?

You might have heard that Jack Stack is releasing his third book. His original bestselling book, The Great Game of Business, has inspired companies and business owners across the world with a life-changing business operating system that educates your people in the rules of business, rallies them around a common goal, empowers them to see and improve the score, and engages them by giving them skin in the game. It is in its 34th printing, was recently selected as one of the "100 Best Business Books of All Time," has been cited in 140 scholarly articles and 100 business books, and has been published in 14 languages. Now Jack is releasing his new book, Change the Game: Saving the American Dream By Closing the Gap Between the Haves and the Have-Nots to share the Why behind the Great Game of Business® operating system:

Anthony Wilder is a full-service, custom architecture, construction, and interior design provider founded by the husband-and-wife team of Anthony and Liz Wilder. The Wilder team has been creating award-winning projects in and around the Washington, DC, metropolitan and tri-state area for more than twenty years. Back in 2006, the company was setting records in helping their customers’ dreams come true as the housing market boomed. Revenues were way up, and the firm had built up a two-year pipeline of backlog work to come. Everything was going great, and as the old saying goes, “Why fix something that isn’t broken?” And then the recession hit.

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:

Taking the leap into open-book management and a transparent culture can be intimidating, so we asked the best of the best in open-book why they implemented the Great Game of Business®, and what motivates them to continue investing in The Game.

On Monday, September 15, 2019, thousands of factory workers went on strike. It was the first time the union, the United Auto Workers, or UAW, had called for a work stoppage in a decade. It remains to be seen if and when the strike will have any significant impact on any of the automotive-related businesses at SRC.