Participative management Book

Open-Book Management, by John Case, presents a new management philosophy of converting any company’s hired hands into businesspeople. This new approach of running a company treats people like ‘adults’, rather than ‘kids’, who can make their own decisions on what needs to be done instead of being told by managers on what to do.
Open-Book Management (OBM) system is broken down into four principles that need to be established in a company’s culture so that it reaps the fruits of this system:

1. Get financial and operational information out to all in the company,
2. Business literacy; train people to understand and use the information,
3. Empowerment with brains; hold people responsible and accountable for their decisions, and
4. Give people a stake in the company’s success (or failure).

The book presents numerous case studies on the success of OBM for companies, some of which are amongst Fortune 500, in addition to testimonies of many executives on the positive change that had affected their companies’ bottom lines after applying the OBM.

Although it varies in implementation depending on the complexities of different industries, I feel that OBM is able to transform how employees perceive their value in their workplace. Consequently, if perception of self-value moves in the right direction, employees will think as businesspeople not as hired hands. As Richard Branson says: “Take care of your employees, and they’ll take care of your business”!

I recommend the book for any executive or C-level person facing problems with employees engagement at work, and, more importantly, struggling with red lines in his financial statements.