At Springfield Remanufacturing, one of the businesses currently using open book management, employees have an equity investment— and this style of operating is consistent with the owners’ interests. If company owners share their profit motive with workers, then they’ll profit, too. Jack Stack, the company founder, believes so strongly in partnering with all workers that he’s instituted bonus plans, contests, and ongoing incentives for everyone’s positive contributions to the company’s bottom line. Sharing what were once “company secrets” with all members of the company, as appropriate, is one way for leadership to tell the truth. Springfield Remanufacturing is dispelling the myth that employees “can’t handle the truth.”
No matter how many times I say that relationship building takes time, I continue to encounter the client who wants to skip this step and “get on with the task.” I have to reply: “This is the task.” The greater the trust level a partnership has created, the less need there is for maintenance. Relationships that are characterized by high intimacy but require little maintenance are usually long-term relationships. Some people I care about very much I hardly see, maybe once every four or five years. Yet when we are reunited, we carry on as if we’ve never been apart. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done, where we’ve been, or what’s happened in the intervening years.We immediately revert to our old trust level.