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Employee Empowerment Providing a Stake in Your Outcomes


By Lynn Perenic, Owner, Argent Tape and Label


Ownership thinking, employee empowerment, harnessing your team for maximum results… all of those terms bring to mind a time seven years ago when I became the owner of Argent Tape and Label. Purchasing a business that had seen better days, I had


only one option—and failing was not it. The Magazine 14 5.2017


Games Are More Fun than Closing Plants I had to find a way to breathe life back into the business and do it quickly. The year was 2010. Argent Tape and Label (ATL) was strapped with debt, and no bank was willing to loan any money. It was a tough spot to be in. So I took classes and read books. That’s when I “found” The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack. This was just what I was looking for—my shot in the arm.


It was all so relatable—the failing business, beating the odds, the tough road ahead. This was the road map I would use to navigate ATL back to becoming a successful company. Hard work, education, and determination were needed to make this work. The team had to believe in the mission.


Stack’s book works on the premise that business is a lot like playing a game. He is correct. Everyone likes a good game, and everyone likes to win. In order to be successful, the entire team needs to know the rules. One of the most important rules, (I’d even call it “the golden rule”) is that the goal of business is to make money. It’s an easy concept, but not everyone understands it completely.


Know if You’re Winning—Keep Score! This is where the importance of education comes in. While every business “keeps score” (income statement), we must make sure that all the players on the team understand what they’re looking at. How can one tell if a business is profitable? This is done by looking at the income statement and balance sheet. Revealing these numbers without first educating your team about what they are looking at is, at best, futile. At worst, it can cause unnecessary anxiety and miscommunication. My advice—take it slow and make sure you establish a solid foundation on which you can build.


Team members keep score to know if they are winning or losing. Each week the team comes together to discuss how the business is performing. Discussion surrounds each line on the income statement, but with an exciting twist. Mini games are played in order to help everyone understand the full impact of that line and come up with ways to positively impact “trouble lines.”


Finding the Best “Players” You may be wondering how you can not only attract the right type of people to buy into this way of doing business, but also how to retain them. The answer revolves around one of the cornerstones of the Open


GIVING EVERYONE A VOICE IN HOW YOUR COMPANY IS RUN


Lynn delivered a presentation on Open Book Management on Monday, April 3, at the Printing Industries of America Continuous Improvement Conference held in Pittsburgh, PA.


You can download and view the presentation at the following URL: http://prnt.in/perenic.


SOLUTIONS


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