Business is a Game, How to Increase Your Risk of Death by 200%, Dealing with Interruptions
Business
Business is a Game
Metaphors abound in business speak. A common one is that business is war! That’s garbage.
Business done right is an opportunity to solve people’s problems and make a profit doing it. The better you are at solving your customer’s problem or meeting their need, the more money you make.
Same goes for employees. We all love to complain about the inability to find good people. Finding good people is not difficult. Getting them to work for you might be.
Just like you need to know why your customer should buy from you, you need to know and tell a compelling story about why a great employee should work for you. Do you pay well? Do you treat everyone with respect? Are there opportunities to grow and learn? Will I get to see my wife and kids while I’m working with you or do I have to sacrifice them at the door?
You get the picture. Business can and should be an incredible force for good, but is often experienced as a war between ownership/management and staff. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Open-book management can help. In most companies, employees assume that the company owners are leaving each day with truckloads of cash and do not have a care in the world. They also have very little idea about how their work contributes to the profitability of the organization. That creates a disconnect between the team and the owner. The team needs more staff, more tools, more time and the owner is the only one that actually sees the impact of all of this buying.
Open-book management shows and educates the team on how the organization makes money. Once you put OBM in place, the owner will no longer be the only person watching the bottom line. Your people will be as motivated as you are to save a buck and to make a buck. Why? Because you’ve educated them on how the game is played and you’ve given them a stake in the outcome.
One of the best know examples and exemplars of open book management is Springfield Remanufacturing Company and it’s founder, Jack Stack. Jack invented the term “The Great Game of Business” and wrote an excellent book with the same name.
Why should you care about open-book management? First, you are probably tired of the constant pull between you and your workforce. You know there must be a better way. Second, open book management just works.
Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation, now known as SRC Holdings, started in 1983 when thirteen managers bought out their plant that International Harvester was going to close. The pulled together $100,000 cash and borrowed $8.9 million to save the 119 jobs in the plant. They quickly realized they needed a system to keep everyone working together to keep the plant open. Jack started sharing the financial statements and educating the entire workforce on how the financials work. That was the beginning of open-book management.
SRC Holdings now owns over 60 businesses and their stock value has grown 360,000%. By 2012, the average ESOP (employee stock option plan) account for the line workers who were with them from the beginning topped $400,000 in value. $1,000 invested in the S&P 500 index in 1983 would be worth $8,434 in 2012. The same amount in invested in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in 1983 would be worth $113,000. If you had invested the $1,000 in SRC, it would be worth $3.4 million today. And SRC has been selected as one of the top 100 companies to work for in America! Not bad.
SRC has taught over 6,000 companies how to win with open-book management. Open-book management helps companies build leaders who build great businesses. Financial literacy and an understanding of how capitalism works is a priceless gift to those you work with and playing the game is a lot of fun.
My two favorite quotes from Jack Stack about open-book management are:
- “It’s easy to stop one guy, but pretty hard to stop 100.”
- “A company of owners will outperform a company of employees any day.”
Don’t worry. You do not have to form an ESOP to get your team in the game. I hope I’ve peaked your interest about how to start playing the game at your workplace. Over the next few weeks, we’ll dive into the details about how to get started.
Health
How do you increase your risk of death by 200%? Skydive? Rock Climbing? Nope. Just sit more. In a recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, it was found that those who sat for more than 13 hours per day had 200% higher risk of death compared to those who sat for less than 11 hours per day. On average, the study participants sat for 12.3 hours of an average 16-hour waking day.
The study found that risk of death grew in tandem with total sitting time and the duration of sitting. For every 30 minutes of additional sedentary time, risk of death increased by 19%.
What to do? Whatever you can based on your job situation. I’ve always tried to work in dedicated stretches of 60-90 minutes to maximize productivity. This might change the way I do things. The study authors suggest taking a 5 minute walk break every 30 minutes. That break sounds long, but maybe some push-ups or burpees?? It takes less than a minute to get your heart pounding with those!
Here’s too your health!
Life, Fun, Whatever!
I am a task person. I get annoyed when people get in the way of me getting my tasks completed. I know this thought process is not entirely healthy, but we’ve all got to get things done, right?
I ran across this quote the other day and it really helps me keep my cool when my tasks get postponed by interruptions!
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