The Open-Book Management Experience

Over the last decade companies have struggled to balance the human dimension of business with the need to be aggressive, competitive, and profitable. Of all the management solutions considered, one philosophy, open-book management, has proven its power to transform organizations and enhance morale and productivity again and again.

In this practical and highly accessible book, John Case, the leading authority and foremost chronicler of open-book management, shows how to put the open-book philosophy to work. The Open-Book Management Experience explains how to identify critical numbers, how to bring the corporate financials down to earth, and how to set up a system that gets everyone in the business working to improve performance.

What was it about a seemingly risky philosophy, which revealed all of a company's financial numbers to every employee, that compelled companies as dissimilar as multibillion-dollar RR Donnelley and modest-sized Crisp publications, to undertake such a drastic rethinking of company management?

Was it the increased profits other companies, such as Amoco Canada, were experiencing due to their employees' new financial involvement in the company? Or was it he improved production that Bagel Works, Inc., and Dixie Ironworks, Inc., realized through employee joint accountability? Perhaps it was the enhanced employee morale that still other companies were achieving now that their employees were partners who designed their own bonus packages. Likely, it was all these reasons and dozens more that convinced hundreds of companies to adopt open-book management to help reduce costs, improve quality, and boost sales, all while creating an environment that reinvented and revitalized the role of the employee.

Using a step-by-step methodology gleaned from the experiences of more than 100 successful companies, and revealing tools and techniques such as electronic scoreboards and collaborative "games," Case shows how open-book management can work for any company wanting to bridge the age-old gap between concern for people and the need for rigorous performance measurement and improvement.

John Case's new book describes how companies both large and small have actually implemented open-book management — how they got started, how they overcame obstacles, and how they taught employees to understand the business.

• Preface: A Revolution in Progress
• Introduction: Do We Really Need Another New Approach to Management?
1. Transforming a Company through Open-Book Management
• First Principle: The Transparent Company
2. Overview: The Importance (and Unimportance) of Numbers
3. Critical Numbers
4. Financials You Can Actually Use
5. Scoreboards
6. Teaching Business
• Second Principle: A Company Of Businesspeople
7. Overview: On Empowerment and Other Buzzwords
8. First Steps: Learning to Take Responsibility
9. Continuous Empowerment
• Third Principle: A Stake In Success
10. Overview: Bonuses, Good and Bad
11. Bonus Design: Part One
12. Bonus Design: Part Two
13. Steal This Bonus!
• Games: Open-Book Management In Microcosm
14. Overview: The Meaning of Games
15. Steal This Game!
• Implementing Open-Book Management
16. Overview: The Change Process
17. Implementation in a Small Company: The Basics
18. Implementation in a Small Company: The Ten Step Process
19. Implementation in a Large Company: The Basics
20. Implementation in a Large Company: The Donnelley Experience
• Conclusion: A Way of Thinking

One of the new models. I feel a bit anxious about it.