THE DOS AND DONTS OF OPEN-BOOK LEADERSHIP
✔ Dodefine and relentlessly communicate the big picture—what results you expect, your
strategy and priorities, interdependencies among groups, rewards for achieving results,
and so on. [☛8.3 Organizational Communication]
✔ Doeducate and train your employees in appropriate business skills—the nature of the
business, the external pressures, the basics of making money, customer needs and ser-
vice, understanding and using financial data, production measures, and what all those
numbers mean for the organization and for themselves. [☛14.3 Needs Analysis]
✔ Doredesign your information and accounting systems so employees can understand
and use the data these systems generate to make informed decisions. Too often, these
systems are designed exclusively for senior management and for external reporting.
[☛2.1 Systems Thinking]
✔ Dogive up control over the numbers. Information is a form of power. Open-book lead-
ership must be combined with a participative leadership style and with teamwork.
✔ Doensure that other organizational systems are aligned to support open-book leader-
ship. [☛5.6 Aligning Systems]
✔ Docombine open-book leadership with rewards that are linked to performance. Use a
mix of individual, team, and organizational rewards, while ensuring that the overall
success of the organization is not compromised.
✔ Dodiscuss regularly the meaning and trending of the numbers, then set new targets as
conditions change.
✔ Domake open-book leadership fun. Make the numbers come alive with stories and
examples.
✘ Don’tuse information to manipulate others. Rather, use it to create understanding and
to reward success.
✘ Don’tgo halfway. Don’t provide only half the numbers needed, or fail to fairly reward
performance.HOW TO USE THIS LEADERSHIP TOOL
“Let your people know whatever you know about the company, the division, the department, the
particular task at hand. ...Don’t use information to intimidate, control, or manipulate people. ...
When you share the numbers and bring them alive, you turn them into tools people can use to help
themselves as they go about business every day.”
—Jack Stack, THE GREAT GAME OF BUSINESSSharing the numbers is only one small part of leadership. Use this checklist to assess your readi-
ness to be an open-book leader. Plan actions to improve your leadership practices in those areas
where you consider yourself to be underperforming as a leader. Your action plans might also
include ways of building on present strengths as a leader.
SECTION 4 TOOLS FORDESIGNINGPRODUCTIVEPROCESSES ANDORGANIZATIONS 123