Open Book Management Workshop March 24th at 1 pm
Cooperative Maine Business Alliance
Good Afternoon!
We are looking forward to offering you the second in a series of five FREE workshops in our 2021 P5 Learning Series on Wednesday March 24th, 1-3pm.
We highly recommend attending this workshop if you are interested in learning about practices and tools that build financial knowledge, trust, and ownership. Open Book Management supports organizational culture, democracy in the workplace (or in your ROC) and can help develop a sense of ownership and engagement through greater understanding of how work, decisions, and policies affect the bottom (or triple bottom) line.
Open Book Management allows managers and employees to gain a mutual understanding of how to best move the organization forward. It fosters a culture based in democratic processes with access to information to allow for sound decision making on all levels. It can be an eye opening and fun experience for employees, who might otherwise feel frustration around financially motivated decisions. It can also break down some of the intimidation that people can often feel when looking at financials. OBM really brings financial literacy to the forefront and empowers both managers and staff. It can certainly allow for more engagement by staff, excitement about goal setting and reaching milestones, and an overall understanding of the health of the organization and what elements affect that health.
Open Book Management: engagement, education and excellence
Presenter: Melanie Reid, Columinate
Wednesday, March 24th, 1 - 3 pm
The impetus for introducing Open Book Management (OBM) is often to bring more transparency and achieve improved financial performance. While these goals are important, OBM is so much more! Implementing an OBM philosophy is about changing the culture of your business (or community). It’s about management letting go of some of the control, opening up a dialog, and drawing employees (or community members) into decisions that can bring about lasting change. OBM is about numbers and finances, but it’s also about operationalizing the Ends. It’s a way to help every member of the staff recognize how the work they do every day connects to the larger, long-term goals of the co-op.
Giving employees the opportunity to engage in thoughtful conversation, participate in decision-making and be part of setting goals offers them something more than their daily tasks. More importantly, understanding how those tasks impact the bottom-line can really ignite people’s enthusiasm to do an excellent job every day. Within OBM culture, the conversation returns time and again to the ways in which everybody’s actions impact sales, margin, labor and the long-term success of the co-op.
In this workshop, we will review the potential benefits of Open Book Management and the elements needed for its successful adaptation into a cooperative business model.
Have a wonderful week!