The Great Game of Business, Expanded and Updated

The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company

By: Jack Stack, Bo Burlingham

Narrated by: Jack Stack, Stephen Baker

Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. That's when a green young manager, Jack Stack, took over and turned it around. He didn't know how to "manage" a company, but he did know about the principal, of athletic competition and democracy: keeping score, having fun, playing fair, providing choice, and having a voice.

With these principles he created his own style of management - open-book management. The key is to let everyone in on financial decisions. At SRC, everyone learns how to read a P&L - even those without a high school education know how much the toilet paper they use cuts into profits. SRC people have a piece of the action and a vote in company matters. Imagine having a vote on your bonus and on what businesses the company should be in. SRC restored the dignity of economic freedom to its people. Stack's "open-book management" is the key - a system which, as he describes it here, is literally a game, and one so simple anyone can use it.

The Great Game of Business started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement.

The revised and updated edition of The Great Game of Business lays out an entirely different way of running a company. It wasn't dreamed up in an executive think tank or an Ivy League business school or around the conference table by big-time consultants. It was forged on the factory floors of the heartland by ordinary folks hoping to figure out how to save their jobs.

What Stack and his people created was a revolutionary approach to management that has proven itself in every industry around the world for the past 30 years - an approach that is perhaps the last, best hope for reviving the American Dream.

©1992, 2013 The Great Game of Business, Inc. (P)2015 The Great Game of Business, Inc.

Great book

great book easy to listen to great story great ideas look forward to learning more about the company and they're in their game

Great book, even better message

Book is wonderful, message is powerful. Recommend taking the live seminars. Very powerful, great people, very well organized.

Fantastic!

I would love to work at a company that operates this way!

Great book, great explanation, and a great system for business.

As good as it gets

Been 20 years since I read the book. The info is as relevant as it was 20 years ago. Plenty of usable information on how to get your people involved.

Pure gold!!!!!

I never heard something like this, although read about 200 books for now( maybe not really a lot, but its not the point).
I never heard even the idea, or the whole paradigm, that was presented here. This will change my business life for ever. It's pure gold, and I am really fortunate, to be able to read this book. I cant even express in the words, how this book is genius. Thank you soo much, Jack. You are trully extend the principles of abundance for everyone through the business. Thank you, this book is golden.

intriguing ideas

I manage a non profit consulting business so the application isn't as h obvious but worth considering how I can at it. Well done.

great read for business owners

This book goes into all the reasons why it's good to get your people involved in the business and planning process. buy in is critical

Business Primer

This is the quintessential guide to starting the business of the 21st Century. There are many things that can be tangibly taken away from this book so as to create a vastly healthier work environment. but all the keys must be implemented. Forecasting, Mini-games, Huddles, Stake in the Outcome, HIP, Equity and more. they work together like gears in a transmission. You can operate okay without a few. but to really see the difference and to get that driving force, you have to use all of your gears.

It's a good way to start looking into the GGOB

It's a good first approach into Open Book Management. It's well structured. I would have liked to have more specific examples.

An update on a clap

Building a profitable business with a great company culture is incredibly hard...Jack Stack provides a blueprint in this book. He's not an academic and this isn't theoretical - it's based on more than 30 years of real world experience.