The Great Game of Business Blog

      We live in a strange time. It’s not always clear what’s true or what’s a figment of someone’s imagination—like a made-up story that people think is true that then spreads like wildfire on social media. When people can’t agree on facts anymore, it creates all kinds of problems.  

Recessions are painful. They cause businesses to close—and billions of dollars in capital to melt away. Recessions are also about more than just a dip in economic activity. They get personal. People lose their jobs and a way to support their family. Recessions strain our social safety net and put lives at risk. The only good thing about a recession is when it ends. But there’s another ugly truth about recessions—there’s always another one right around the corner. Historically, recessions hit the U.S. economy about every 10 years or so. That means even as we struggle to get through the current recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, we can also start the clock on when the next recession will hit. Recognizing that 2020 has been a heckuva year, the question becomes: What are you doing today to plan for the next recession?

When practicing The Great Game of Business® (GGOB), the breakthrough comes when companies shift from focusing on an event (bonus plan, financial literacy program, etc.) to using GGOB as an operating system to run their organization. GGOB is a system. It’s a pattern. It’s a strategy. It’s a way of thinking. If you want to fully leverage the power of Great Game™, you must treat it as a system and persistently work it.

When you travel just about anywhere throughout the world, there is a bond that brings people together: Jobs. The desire to earn a living, provide for a family, and give back to one’s community is universal. But the bonds that we all share go beyond what we do or where we work. There’s something else we’re all searching for—a way to leverage business to help close the gap between the so-called “haves” and the “have-nots” that increasingly plagues our societies. We’re looking for a way where everyone can earn the opportunity to win and get ahead. We’re also searching for a way to make work more engaging and participatory. To give people a voice in the work that they do and to give them the opportunity to earn a reward that truly reflects their hard work. We wonder if there is a way to leverage business in a way that creates a better, more equitable society that future generations can build on. In short, we’re all looking for a better way to run a business that gives every worker the chance to grab the brass ring for themselves.

  In The Great Game of Business, Jack Stack shares his experiences and lessons learned throughout the years, including what he was taught about management early in his career. What was the most important lesson he learned about management? Ignore almost all of those "best practices."  What he was being taught and what he had learned about management were entirely different! He discovered that the practice of management is filled with myths guaranteed to screw up any company, and we've compiled our blogs on the 5 Myths of Management here:

If you have implemented The Great Game of Business® and are making progress in your company, you might be wondering what the next step is. How do you sustain The Game and keep your team engaged in the long-run? Here are some tips and tools to keep your current staff energized, and bring new employees up to speed on your Great Game™ culture and practices:

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:

­ While I am a voracious reader, I also listen to a lot of books on tape. A couple of years ago, as I first listened to The Great Game of Business on Audible on a cross-country road trip, I was captivated by Jack Stack’s rich voice as he described the transformation of his business through a totally new concept of how to run a business. Having been at the helm of a business for 28 years at that time, I thought I had seen—and tried everything. I will confess that through the years, my staff understandably would start rolling their eyes every time I launched a new initiative, planning process, or management approach that sprung from my latest read. But The Great Game of Business® was different. I asked everyone on my staff to make a priority of reading or listening to the book. I was committed to changing the very nature of our business this time, starting with training the team in financial literacy, and opening the books.

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.

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.