A Paradigm Shift Towards Open-Book-Management

by Cenen Herrera

Writing from Springfield, Missouri - USA

During the first quarter of 2011, I attended a seminar entitled “Great-Game-of-Business" authored by Mr. Jack Stack, President & CEO of Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC). The seminar was all about common-sense accounting and how transparency played an important role in professionalizing an organization. How much information should shop-floor managers and their workers know about an organization’s performance and the critical numbers that drove such performance were the two important lessons that were taught during the seminar. SRC’s actual turn-around strategy in the early nineties using open-book-management was used as the reference case, and top-executives representing various industries came together to play the great-game-of-business.

I attended the seminar together with top executives from our company and in a scale of 10 where 10 is the highest, I would give the seminar a score of 10 for the following reasons:

1. Open-Book-Management is a strategic winning gambit for companies who believe that employees are the best and real assets of their company;

2. The great-game-of-business is a highly functional game for professional managers to cultivate unlimited business opportunities;

3. The critical numbers that drive performance should be clear to all employees of an organization for all to see the actual causes of any gap between target and actual numbers;

4. Precision marketing is when all employees are committed to the marketing plan and this plan is best carried out through open-book-management; and

5. SRC and its employees have been playing the great-game-of-business for decades, and have shown a large number of organizations and their employees how to play the game to earn regular bonuses that are not found in organizations that do not practice open-book-management.