When most people hear the term Open-Book Management – they take it to mean simply sharing financial information with their team, and while many understand the concept when it comes to opening the kimono, people are hesitant. If you open the books in a lean year – will employees run for the hills? If you open the books in a good year – will they want a raise? Guess what – they already want one!
One of the approaches to Open-Book Management that we advocate is called the Great Game of Business. At its core, the management style is about having a positive impact of the lives of your team by engaging, educating, and empowering them.
What sets the Great Game of Business apart from other OBM operating systems, is that it’s about much more than looking at a set of financial statements each month – it’s about educating employees to think, act, and feel like business owners.
Why would you want to do that? Employee engagement scores hover at around on 13% globally, and only around 24% in Australia – and that’s scary when we think about the link between our work environments and our quality of life generally. It’s safe to say that creating a sustainable business is now as much about creating an engaging, fun, and safe environment for the team as it is to deliver quality products and services.
Not only is the Great Game of Business a way to engage your employees, it also provides everyone in your team with a story and purpose (and understanding) behind what they do each day.
Providing a sense of purpose is particularly important for Millennials – who are increasingly looking for larger meaning at work to drive purpose in their own lives, even more so as the distinction between work and life becomes blurred for this demographic. Open Book businesses help employees create and build a sense of purpose by including them in developing and owning the businesses vision and values, and while that’s directly beneficial in terms of improving engagement at work – team members take that sense of fulfillment home with them every night.
Success in business is about much more than numbers, it always has been – it’s about improving and having a positive impact on the lives of those who are connected to the numbers. Hear my story and experience on how my organisation approached engaging me in “The Game” –