The Great Game of Business

In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. Today it's one of the most successful and competitive companies in the United States, with a share price 3000 times what it was thirty years ago. This miracle turnaround is all down to one man, Jack Stack, and his revolutionary system of Open-Book Management, in which ever employee understands the company's key figures, can act on them and has a real stake in the business. In Stack's own words: 'When employees think, act and feel like owners ... everybody wins.'

In SRC, everyone from the cleaners to the CEO knows exactly how much they contribute to the company, how much they cost, and how they depend on one another to make the company a success. As a management strategy, 'the great game of business' is so simple and effective that it's been taken up by companies from Exxon to The Body Shop and Ben & Jerry's (and possibly even Profile Books).