Learn about Open Book Management basics from Gauri Thergaonkar, Community Manager for ZingTrain. She has helped me set up all of my Zingerman’s interviews. I finally get her on the mic to get her perspective on life at Zingerman’s.
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Questions
What is your company doing right now:
- Open Book Management (OBM)?
- Open Book Reporting?
- None of the above?
What area of your books could you open up and start getting team input?
How could opening up the planning, forecasting and reporting of your financials to your team affect your organization?
What’s holding you back?
I would love to see your thoughts below in the comments.
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Thank you,
Todd
Music is LA All Night, GG Riggs, Courtesy of Shutterstock”
Notes taken during the editing of this episode:
What is Open Book Management? Methodolgy to give people the tools and information to help people run their business. People can do a better job when they understand their role in the entire organization.
Difference between Open Book Management and Open Book Reporting? – Whose hands are on the steering wheel. When everyone owns the reporting and the decision making. It’s who owns it. Sailing could be an example of this. Everyone knows their role and how it fits in with the larger goal. They also can confidently make decisions because they know the impact their actions will have and can report back to the team on what and how they did.
Key metrics on the Scoreboard.
Key metrics that determine whether or not your business is on task.
All these go back to the bottom lines.
A key performance indicator is owned by someone.
The plan
The Forecast
The Actual
Report, Forecast, and Deliver (this means get a group together to execute on making sure it happens.) On the metric every week.
Who comes up with the yearly plan? Depends.
One thing you teach your team: Here’s how to write a business plan and plan the financials.
Who’s responsible for the bigger vision?
Then the strategy.
ZT is collaborative among the team. But Maggie is final say.
Deli is more complex.
How does this OBM affect day-to-day decision making? Sales person was able to come up with a new idea for a new client because they were looking at the board and knew the goals.
You know what the business needs.
Open communication.