When many business owners and executives hear the words "Strategic Planning," their minds jump to another topic. Any other subject will do. In their hearts, they know that planning is important to the organization. But knowing where to start is the issue. They have heard the stories from their peers who created a plan, and it sat on the shelf for a year or forever. As a result, planning happened once and then stopped. It amounted to a waste of time and money. The question then becomes: why bother planning at all?

There was so much promise for the post-pandemic economy—especially for the manufacturing sector. Many organizations continue to see an unprecedented surge in demand for their products—levels the economy hasn’t seen for 40 years. For many, it’s been a struggle to keep up with customer orders. It’s like trying to drink out of a fire hydrant to keep up with this kind of growth. The forecasts continue to look strong, too, as retailers and dealers increasingly look to insource and onshore production from overseas. The future of manufacturing in the U.S. looks brighter than it has in decades. Yet, there’s a catch. Manufacturers now have emerging pain points to contend with. Supply chains are stretched to their limits. Ships lay docked outside ports while there aren’t enough trucks or drivers to cart products away. Millions of dollars of finished goods may sit in warehouses for months awaiting parts worth mere dollars.

There's something special about the Midwestern town of Springfield, Missouri. It just seems to breed entrepreneurs. It's been the launching pad for household names like Bass Pro Shops and O'Reilly Auto Parts, among others that help power the nation's economy. Maybe there's something in the water. Or perhaps it's tied to the can-do attitude of generations of farmers raised in the area. While Jeff Schrag wasn't born in Springfield—he moved there in 1995 after he bought a newspaper based there, The Daily Events, a legal notice publication—he's what you might call a "serial entrepreneur." Among his many ventures, he has started a business that sells cufflinks, one that offers coloring books, and he's also rehabbed and flipped real estate.

      You never thought you’d be here–navigating your business through a global pandemic that has changed nearly everything about the way we work.   You’ve learned to cope with the quarantines, the safety protocols and the financial uncertainty. Still, now you’re facing one more potential pivot: the switch to a hybrid or fully remote workforce.   You’re thinking: What happens when my employees are no longer together as a team? Will they lose motivation? Will communication break down? Will our bottom line suffer?  Maybe you’re already experiencing some of these issues–but it doesn’t have to be this way.   The core principles of the Great Game of Business®–educating and empowering employees to think and act like owners, and engaging them by giving them a Stake in the Outcome®—can help eliminate the risk of disengagement that comes with remote work. 

Peter Drucker is credited with saying, "culture eats strategy for breakfast". Even in today’s tech driven economy, a company’s human capital is still the most powerful potential competitive advantage. Great work culture is incredibly hard to build and even harder to maintain. Usually, workplace culture is measured in terms of employee engagement. The cultures I admire most built their employee engagement around these strategies below:

      Things were looking up there for a while, weren’t they? At least the long-term forecasts still look strong. But this omicron variant is causing us to tear our hair out, worrying about the health and safety of our people (let alone our loved ones at home). Just this past week, we saw 82 of our associates call in sick—that’s 5% of our company. Just as bad, something like 8% of our company has tested positive for the virus in January. Then, we got hit with the news that our school system was shutting down for a week or more because of the incredible wave of infections ripping through our community. That means we have parents forced to stay home or find childcare options at the last minute, which just puts enormous stress on everyone.

You asked and we've answered! In this blog series, our experienced Great Game coaches answer questions directly from the open-book community. What is the best coaching tip you have for companies just starting to practice the Great Game of Business? Be sure the CEO is fully bought in, directly involved, is a main cheerleader, sets the example, and ensures that all involved (especially 100& of the leadership team) are enrolled and on board. Period!   Create a solid communication and business literacy training process via a weekly Huddle rhythm.

Start By Dispelling Three Common Management Myths: Lessons From The Great Game of Business People are quitting jobs at a rate like we’ve never seen before. In what’s become known as “The Great Quit” or “The Great Resignation,” millions of workers are leaving their jobs every month. When you combine that with the flood of retiring Baby Boomers, we’re witnessing a seismic reshuffling of the work force. Even Santa Claus is in short supply. What’s even more stunning is that this might be just the beginning. Research from Microsoft and Gallup finds that some 41% of the global workforce, and nearly 50% of employees in the U.S., are actively looking for a new job. As many (if not most) employers now scramble to keep their existing people—let alone recruit new employees—it’s created a new emphasis on answering the question: Why are so many workers quitting?

Deciding what your company wants to be when it grows up should be a team effort. We continue to live in unprecedented times. Nothing seems predictable, and it's just about impossible to get anyone to agree to a consensus. Take inflation as an example. While plenty of economists continue to forecast that inflationary pressure is a temporary product of strong demand and snarled supply chains, others point to skyrocketing prices as evidence that an inflationary wrecking ball is already at work wreaking permanent economic damage. Tracking issues like these regularly makes it easy to get lost in the day-to-day weeds.

“If people don’t participate, they don’t buy in. If they don’t buy in, they don’t commit. If they don’t commit, they don’t deliver!” These words can be found on page 348 of The Great Game of Business. What a simple yet powerful statement. Businesses, small and large, struggle with employees delivering on their metrics. Maybe it’s not a delivery problem, but a buy-in problem. According to Great Place to Work, Employees who find their job to have “special meaning: this is not ‘just a job’” are 4 times more likely to give extra to the company 11 times more committed to stay 14 times more likely to look forward to coming to work How can you give special meaning to their job? Get their buy-in on the plan.