Get in the Game - How to Create Rapid Financial Results and Lasting Cultural Change

Though technology has evolved at hyper speed over the past hundred years, management styles have mostly stayed the same. The higher-ups make the decisions, and the employees grind it out, often without knowing the endgame. In 1983, Jack Stack created a new game: The Great Game of Business.

Get In The Game further explains the rules of this Game: to win, you must get everyone at all levels of the business as informed, involved, and engaged as the owner. This book offers a step-by-step guide on how to teach employees the numbers, show them the big picture, and let them have a say in the company’s future. The Game has already benefited thousands of companies:
Is yours ready to get in The Game?

In This Book, You Will Learn:

The 10 steps our coaches use to fully implement The Great Game of Business into an organization
Best practices for each of the 10 steps

Not only have I had the pleasure of taking the Great Game of Business courses, I continue to use many of the key principles from this leadership system every day in my role as CEO. Beginning with the right leadership; insuring that there is respect for every individual; focusing on optimizing key decisions and instilling a daily desire to win are all key components I have implemented into my operating rhythm. This book will definitely help everyone keep practicing and implementing The Game.

Sam Reese
CEO, Vistage Worldwide

What’s It About?

Perhaps the best way to describe our new book is with a quotation from 26 years ago:

“This book is for people who are fed up with management systems that don’t work. It’s for managers who have tried every motivational tool under the sun and still can’t get people to perform up to their abilities.

"It’s for CEOs who wonder why their companies don’t make more money even after they’ve installed all the latest bells and whistles from the business gurus. It’s for everyone who has ever dreamed of working in a company run on democratic principles—the same principles we demand in every other aspect of our lives.”

From The Great Game of Business, by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham, 1992

How to Use this Book

This book was designed with a focus on implementation. The how-to. The cookbook. The step-by-step approach we use every day to implement and sustain The Great Game of Business inside organizations all over the world and in every industry. We designed this book to teach you the principles and practices of the operating system to “get you in The Game” quickly, take you on a deeper dive to make it stick, and, finally, to start you on the journey of High-Involvement Planning^™ that will help you transform not only your business, but your people.

It’s money. It’s people. It’s both.^™

Rich Armstrong has nearly thirty years of experience in improving business performance and employee engagement through open-book management and employee ownership, with service as a business coach and as a current executive at SRC Holdings Corporation, a thirty-five-year old employee-owned company and one of the United States’s top one hundred largest majority employee-owned companies.

Rich has been instrumental in the ongoing development of SRC Holdings’ open-book management and employee-ownership practices through practical, “firsthand” experience leading several of SRC’s business units. This experience has enabled him to successfully apply these practices in both small- and large-scale company implementations around the world. He coauthored the update to The Great Game of Business—20th Anniversary Edition.

Rich is a graduate of Pittsburg State University and serves on the board of the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO). He cherishes his time with his wife, Alicia, and four children, Ryan, Ethan, Rylee, and Jackson. Rich’s guilty pleasure is making music in his home studio and playing in his ’90s rock tribute band.

Steve Baker is vice president of The Great Game of Business, Inc. Steve coauthored Get in the Game as well as the update of the number one bestseller, The Great Game of Business—20th Anniversary Edition. Known for his engaging and irreverent style, Steve is a top-rated, sought-after speaker and coach on open-book management, strategy and execution, leadership, and employee engagement.

His audiences range from Harvard University to the Department of Defense, and he is a regular at Inc. magazine’s Inc. 5000 Conference. He has served on the Board of the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) and SRC Holding’s Ownership Culture Initiative.

Steve is an award-winning artist and lives in Springfield, Missouri, with his trophy wife, JoAnn, and three above-average children.

The Higher Laws of Business were introduced in the 1992 book The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham. They explain how and why we teach employees to think and act like owners. You won’t find them taught in Harvard University’s MBA Program or the World Dictionary of Business Idioms. Rather, these common-sense laws exist in the minds and souls of people who are street smart and have real-life experience in the world of business. Mention any of these laws and they’ll likely grin and say, "By getting people to think at the highest level, you make it possible for them to perform up to the peak of their abilities."