Are you looking to kickstart your journey or maybe you need a little help? Here are a few useful tools and resources to help you along the way.
The Dollar Exercise
This simple exercise is designed to show your people the line of sight for anyone in your organization so they can see that they can make a dramatic impact.
NOTE: The Great Game of Business is not about cost-cutting! But teaching a simple income statement is a great place to start teaching people business.
By introducing them to an income statement you’ve also changed their perceptions about how hard it can be for a business to make money while appealing to them to help make a difference. What a phenomenal way to have people begin taking line-item ownership as well.
1. Ask your team to start listing your main “buckets” of revenue.
2. List your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
3. Explain: Revenue minus COGS equals Gross Profit
4. List your Expenses
5. Explain: Gross Profit minus Expenses equals Net Profit.
6. Draw a one-dollar bill on the left. This represents one dollar of Revenue.
7. Fill in how much your company keeps (bottom line) from every dollar.
8. Compare your numbers to the market. What are your competition and industry peers doing? Who are the low, mid, and high performers?
9. With a Critical Number of 10% Net Profit, ask how many dollars we have to sell to get a dollar on the bottom line. Now calculate your own Revenue multiple, replacing x with your Net Profit. (1/x = revenue multiple).
10. Gain Line of Sight. Can everyone in the company see where they can affect lines on the Income Statement? Ask: Where can I make the biggest impact? What are the lines I can own? What are my time bandits?
"Annual employee turnover has shrunk to about 2% in an industry that averages 50%."
—Tasty Catering, GGOB Practitioner
Staff Meetings (AKA Huddles)
A workplace Huddle is more than just a staff meeting. It’s a regular discussion in which attendees address key performance indicators (KPIs) and areas of improvement. These meetings can take place daily or weekly. The purpose of team Huddles are to drive employee engagement and to serve as a self-correcting measure to keep the company on the path toward achieving its goals. To do this we first get employees educated on company financial information and define the numbers that are most important in an organization. This allows employees to understand how their personal actions affect the company’s most important key performance indicators (we call this your Critical Number™).
See first hand how a Great Game of Business practitioner conducts a team Huddle.
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