Using Critical Numbers: An Action Checklist
Are you doing all you can to help employees move your company's key numbers in the right direction? Use this checklist to find out. ... Read more
Open-Book Management Inc.
Recent Articles about Open-Book Management Inc.
Swipe These Critical Numbers!
Here's a sampling of common critical numbers by company, industry, and sector. Use this list as a benchmark or tailor these numbers to suit your own needs... Read more
Managing Overtime Pay
"We can't really boost efficiency in our department," a manager complains. "Nobody wants to get the work done any faster for fear they won't be called in ... Read more
Q & A: Improving the Bonus
Question: "We want to replace our current bonus system with a new, improved version. Any suggestions on how to phase in the new bonus... Read more
Want Better Performance? Try Better Planning
When done effectively, strategic planning is among the most potent competitive weapons a company can have. Planning helps everyone better understand the d... Read more
How Transparent is Your Company?
Wouldn't it be great if everyone in your company knew what they were trying to achieve and how they intended to achieve it? Get to that point and you've g... Read more
Troubleshooting Your Critical Numbers
Critical numbers are the key financial indicators that determine your company's success. When they move in the right direction, you know you're on track t... Read more
Creating Companies of Companies
Once a company grows beyond a few employees, it's easy for people to lose sight of the business. They work in departments. They worry about keeping the bo... Read more
Keeping Score of Profits
Walk into a company that has its financial information open to everyone, and somewhere, somehow, you're going to see a scoreboard that reports and summari... Read more
Easing into ESOP Education
A recent issue of the National Center for Employee Ownership's Employee Ownership Report features a mental-health-services company called Telecar... Read more
Turbocharge Your Bonus Plan
Bonus kickers are a great way to motivate employees and boost performance. Take, for example, the basic bonus pool at Jim's Formal Wear - 5% of all... Read more
Are Your Information Systems Up to Speed?
Can your company get and analyze good data? Do you have an effective way of disseminating anything you might learn? If not, your information systems are l... Read more
Strategic Planning 101
Unfortunately, strategic planning gets a bad rap at a lot of companies because it' s perceived as a useless exercise. But at many innovative, well-managed... Read more
State-of-the-Art Training
Maritz: the Multimedia, High-Involvement Classroom The Midwest region of Maritz Travel Co. runs business literacy training classes... Read more
Knowledge Retention Benchmarks for Training
Open-book companies Maritz Travel Co. and Morse Bros. have done their own research to determine the best ways to educate their adult learners. Maritz take... Read more
Lights Out!
"For 25 years I've been telling people to turn the lights out when they leave, to no avail. Then I was at our High Point, N.C., operation, where the manag... Read more
Funny Money
There are plenty of fun, cheap ways to reward employees. The trick is to ask them what types of rewards would be most appropriate. For ins... Read more
The Keys to Designing a Great Business Literacy Program
You mention the words "business literacy," and your employees get the shakes. Maybe they've been out of school awhile, or they regard numbers in the same ... Read more
Better 360° Evaluations
How a low-tech, paper-and-pencil 360° feedback systems can achieve great results Read more
The Handbook on Handbooks
McMurry Publishing, a $30 million custom publishing company based in Phoenix, is guided by policies and procedures that reflect the company' s shared valu... Read more
Q
Question: We have a few key vendors, and we hope that sharing certain timelyinformation with them will gain their trust. Any pitfalls... Read more
Playing Baseball for Profits and Prizes
Carolina Safety Associates, based in Gastonia, N.C., sells and services fire protection equipment from more than a dozen branches throughout the Southeast... Read more
Getting Financial Reports You Can Use
Maybe the controller or CFO in your company is suspicious of sharing financial information. The accounting staff can't seem to speed up the monthly close ... Read more
Teaching Employees to Understand Costs
Question: "I run a big assembly plant, and it's hard for the employees to see a connection between the plant's P&L and what they ... Read more
Boosting Performance with Critical Numbers
Learn how to figure out your company's critical numbers -- and how to use them to build a stronger company. Read more
Strategic Planning: Ground Zero
Never done any serious planning before? Neither had Mishi Apparel, whichlaunched a strategic planning process back in 1997 in connection with a proposed m... Read more
How can you inspire peak performance during crunch times?
Why not use open-book management to inspire peak performance during crunch times? It works. And unlike a lot of motivational efforts, it rarely provokes a... Read more
Fun, Simple Flextime Plans
A large insurance company has a successful long-running program, dubbed Ferris Bueller's Day Off, whichgrants employees two unpl... Read more
Leave No Expense Unchecked
Jim's Formal Wear (JFW), a $25 million wholesaler and retailer of tuxedos based in Trenton, Ill., has been teaching employees how to accurately forecast t... Read more
No Tickets, No Worries
As soon as beverage wholesaler Lenox-Martell started tracking business expenses, it became clear the company's 15 drivers needed to be a tad more cost-con... Read more
Promoting like Mad? Try Personal Succession Planning
Before you promote or otherwise move employees to new posts within your company, ask them to name three interested and qualified successors (inside or out... Read more
State-of-the-Art Human Resources
Human resource pros have come up with a host of methods for integrating HR functions with the participative-management approach. Check out the following t... Read more
Figuring Out Your Critical Number
Eight months ago, Critz Inc., a Savannah, Ga.-based auto dealership, made the decision to start living by its crit... Read more
Hiring for an Open-Book Environment
"We're hiring professionals," explains Carol Carroll of Grafton Staffing & Technology Services. "We know how to hire." Grafton screens its own pros... Read more
Crisis? Let Employees Resolve It
Last spring, APA Industries of Melbourne, Australia was facing a crisis -- a pleasant one, granted, but a crisis all the same. Demand for its product unex... Read more
The Cost Cleaners
Mazzella Wire Rope and Sling Co. called it the Laundry List program . Employees compiled a "laundry list" of dozens of cost items, from w... Read more
Everyone's a Salesperson
Last June, memberships were off a little at Ten Thousand Waves, a 70-employee full-service health spa based in Santa Fe. And there was still a good week t... Read more
Midyear Planning Made Easy
If your company takes midyear planning rather casually, this could be your year to make it a more formal event. At Springfield ReManufacturing Corp., base... Read more
Boosting Accuracy at Point of Sale
The problem at Preston Wynne Inc.? Front-line staff at the company's Saratoga, Calif. day spa were making too many mistakes on the point-of-sale system wh... Read more
What's the Key to Great Forecasting?
It helps to start with good, accurate data. Here are 6 pieces of information to gather. Read more
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