Top Six Great Game No-Nos: What NOT to do if you (really) want to play The Game During the time that we’ve been helping others implement The Great Game of Business, we’ve seen the ups and downs and are often surprised by the number of people who are “fair-weather Great Gamers”, meaning they have passion and intent to play The Great Game of Business®, but are missing the mark in one or more areas. Here are the top six (because five just wasn’t enough) Great Game No-nos:

For nearly four decades, SRC has been perfecting its approach to strategic planning, and every year it keeps getting better. Here’s the proven step-by-step approach to building good, accurate plans employees love to execute. People Support what they help to create. That is why at SRC and The Great Game of Business®, building a strategic plan is about involving ALL employees in the planning process. That means planning is a year-round event, and it begins with what’s happening in the real world. Twice a year, in June and October, SRC brings the marketplace to its people so they can accomplish two goals: Develop business-growth plans they can own. Help employees answer the questions: Are we confident and energized about the direction of the company? Having a strategic plan is more than putting on paper what you plan on doing over the next year. It is about setting a strategy, building a plan, dealing with market changes, and most importantly, enabling everybody to contribute. This is what we at The Great Game of Business call High-Involvement Planning™. Big picture — High-Involvement Planning can be broke down into clarifying your strategy and building your plan. If you zoom in, you will see that there are really ten steps to having a successful strategic plan.

Why I Flew To Dallas For The 29th Annual Great Game Of Business Conference Boy, did it feel good to get out of town for a few days. Like many people around the country, I’ve cut way back on my travel since the pandemic hit March 2020. While I thought things would open up once vaccines became widely available, the Delta variant threw my forecasts off quite a bit. But one event I wasn’t willing to take off my calendar was the 29th Annual Great Game of Business Conference held in Dallas a couple of weeks ago. While the team was forced to host the entire conference virtually last year, this year, they planned from the beginning for the conference to be “hybrid”—meaning folks could attend in-person or online.

Great Game Huddles (what others may mistake for typical staff meetings) provide a communication rhythm where everyone is kept informed, involved, and engaged in the progress of The Game.

      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: