Behind the scenes of a multimillion-dollar acquisition

Here’s one of my favorite Open Book Management stories...

As part of getting certified as a Great Game of Business coach, I shadowed Kevin Walter.

He’d been hired by a huge company to help them implement the GGOB and Open book Management.

(And I mean huge — they had about 500 employees and did $100M in annual revenue.)

During my first day on-site, the CEO shared why he chose the GGOB for his business.

A year prior, he was doing due diligence to acquire another company, and sat in on one of their weekly huddles.

And that meeting totally blew his mind.

Every employee was fully engaged and knew the business’s numbers inside and out...

All the departments communicated with each other...

And when someone asked a question, others jumped in with thoughtful, succinct answers.

A far cry from the usual boring meetings where one person drones on and everyone’s staring at their phones.

The CEO ended up buying this company.

And he said that this one meeting was a major reason why.

Think about that for a second.

This guy’s doing a massive acquisition worth millions of dollars.

He stares at the ceiling at night thinking about what could go wrong with this deal.

“What will this do to our company culture?“

“What if employees leave?”

“Will this hurt my clients’ bottom line?”

But seeing employees being engaged is what made him pull the trigger.

And this guy’s seen a lot of meetings in his day.

So that should tell you something...

Anyway, after buying the company, the CEO found out they were using the Great Game of Business, did some research, and decided he wanted to use it too.

In fact, an employee from the acquired company was there at the event.

And he told Kevin he would never work for another company that didn’t use Open Book Management.

I don’t know if he ever said that to the CEO.

But I’m pretty sure that if he hadn’t ended up implementing the Great Game across the board, a lot of employees would have left.

One of my favorite parts of that session was watching the light bulbs go off as people in the audience started to understand what Open Book Management could do for them.

And I saw the same “lightbulb moment” happen with my employees at my own agency when I rolled out the GGOB.

For a lot of people, it’s the first time they’ve ever been given real control over their future at a company.

They feel alive for the first time at their day job, and actually want to contribute to the bottom line.

If you’re interested in building that kind of culture in your own agency:

Book a strategy call with me here, and let’s talk about how you can get started with Open Book Management.

I’ll see you in the next issue!

— Nick Kringas
Founder of Open Book CFO