Imagine a number, that if identified, would represent the single most important thing in your life; the one thing that would change everything. Whoa. That would indeed be awesome. But there’s more to it than that. There’s myth and magic that surrounds the Critical Number™.  It will indeed change your business. And yes, it will change your life.  But it’s not magic. Let’s say that you discovered the ULTIMATE Critical Number. You found a financial measure that will indicate success – and you’re going to focus your entire organization on your ultimate Critical Number and take over the world!

I remember vividly that moment, after many months of management team discussions, when we finally pulled the trigger. We knew that committing to practicing the Great Game of Business would be transformational for our business, but like any change, it was new and scary. We were all very excited, but also nervous and dare I say a little apprehensive. What if the time commitment is too great? What if our team members don’t embrace this new way of thinking? What if it just doesn’t work? BUT WHAT IF IT DOES!?

We're Jenner Ag and we are a practitioner host for The Great Game Experience. We're very excited to partner with The Great Game of Business team for this event. We wanted to tell you a little more about our story and how we practice open-book management in our organization.  Before we had ever heard about The Great Game of Business, Jenner Ag was a profitable company… but we knew we had more potential. Although the profit sharing program the company had implemented years ago was quite successful, the management team could feel it getting stale. Worse, the employees had come to view it as more of an entitlement than something they had to earn. It desperately needed reenergizing.

For many years, when I would speak with Jack Stack about implementing the Great Game at my company, imageOne, I was usually explaining to him why it wouldn’t work for us. “We are unique,” I would explain to him. Jack would just snicker and shake his head. I remember those days vividly and now I know that he was right: business is business and the Great Game works for thousands of companies - why would mine be so different?

Though he’s referring to baseball, Jim Evans’ stance on tracking metrics can be applied to professional organizations just as they are to professional baseball organizations. Metric tracking is a fundamental process for companies that practice the Great Game of Business. And although it’s an essential part of playing The Game, it isn’t uncommon for companies to find themselves at a loss for whether or not they’re tracking the right numbers. Sometimes company leaders don’t even know where to start tracking!

Co-authored by Scott Ogeka Without employee engagement, strategic planning can deliver questionable results. This sentiment often exists because companies lack a simplified process and a buy-in from informed employees. High-Involvement Planning is a key element of open-book management at SRC, West Paw Design and many other companies. This process does not require an outside strategic planning consultancy to help your company; instead it is a planning system that works inside the company.

For owners of closely held businesses, planning for the ultimate transition of ownership is critical to the long-term health and profitability of the organization. Assessing your company’s internal infrastructure and management team is one of the most important components of the planning process. In fact, so is assessing the subsequent necessary additions or adjustments.

Every entrepreneur exits. It’s one of the few absolute certainties in business. Assuming you’ve built a viable company, you can choose when and how you exit, but you can’t choose whether. It’s going to happen. You can count on it.

Too many organizations get into trouble because they don’t plan very well. And even when they are good at planning, they essentially only plan for what they expect to happen; the business they expect to deliver. In our experience, life and business is “like a box of chocolates”, you really can’t be sure what you’re going to get next!

Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) is well-known for high-involvement business planning structure. Using this structure, we develop our strategic plans as a collective organization—involving literally everyone in the company, from hourly employees to management, in the planning process. While it might seem extensive, this process proves an integral component of our open-book management structure. Over the years, involving everyone at all levels of the company has also proven repeatedly to generate positive results.

Van Belle Nursery is a commercial supplier of trees, plants, and shrubs based in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada. The company, which was founded in 1973, ships to a variety of retailers in western Canada as well as in the northern U.S.  Business Challenges One of the biggest challenges that the nursery faces is finding a way to build a cohesive company culture for its 100 associates, most of whom are immigrants from companies like Mexico, Iraq, Sudan, Zimbabwe, China, Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, and India, and even a few from Canada.

As you likely know, forecasting is an integral part of what we do at SRC. We come together twice a year to create a plan of what our organization will look like one year out, five years out, and even 10 years into the future. This is where our organization can, according to the legendary business writer Jim Collins, identify its BHAGs – or big hairy audacious goals.