The Great Game of Business
Author: Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham
(https://www.amazon.ca/Great-Game-Business-Expanded-Updated/dp/0385348339)
About the Author
JACK STACK is Founder, President and CEO of SRC Holdings Corporation, a 100% Employee-Owned Company employing over 1200 people, with sales of over $450,000,000. SRC Holdings Corporation operates 31 business units including Joint Ventures with John Deere, Case New Holland and Navistar, and maintains two venture capital incubator funds.
Summary
This is one of the top 10 most influencial business books. Its entire concept revolves around how to run a business in a way where growth and success is the only way to go - know how to play this game.
The key concept is to inspire people to do great work and the only way do that sustainably is by getting them own their domain and deliverables while supporting them with a proven process of metrics and continuous touch points.
The crazy thing is that there’s nothing new here, you hear and read it all the time. However, lots of companies preach and few do.
Key Take Aways
Ax Command and control
- Related to the Hiring point
- Empower everyone to be their best. This is not done but treating them like children and giving them a step-by-step plan with minute by minute check-ins
Celebrate successes
- Everyone needs to enjoy their work and have fun while doing it. Celebration is a key compoenent
People need to see and understand the big picture
- Do this by over communicating
- Show metrics
Hiring
- It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people to tell them what to do; we hire smart people so that they can tell us what to do. (Steve Jobs)
Find out the critical number you want to hit
- Come up with a plan/owners to achieve the number
Money
- Givem employess stake in the performance of the company. Everybody should benefit from the successes
- Do this by using bonus and equity
Meetings
- Keep everyone engaged with frequent and consistent well-run meetings
- Meetings should have an agenda and the same structure each time
- They should be foused on the metrics and execution of the key projects