People support what they help create

In the last issue, I shared a challenge we’ve been tackling at my agency.

Quick recap if you missed it:

We do digital marketing and SEO for law firms.

Our competitors are pumping out the same cookie-cutter offers, and prospects are skeptical about SEO now.

So that’s pushed us to completely reposition our own offers.

Today, I want to share an Open Book Management principle that’s been a huge help along the way:

People support what they help create.

This really started to sink in once I got certified as a GGOB coach.

I had the privilege of shadowing Kevin Walter (a phenomenal GGOB coach) while earning my certification.

And watching Kevin, I realized I’d been managing the wrong way around.

In the past, I used to try to solve every problem myself.

But Kevin taught me that we can’t just give lip service to having a team of owners…

We have to actually let them act like owners.

So now when someone comes to me with an issue, I don’t just give them an answer on the spot.

Instead, I ask for their opinion.

This paid off big-time during one of our early brainstorming sessions.

I laid out the challenge (coming up with brand-new angles to sell our SEO services), and opened up the floor for discussion.

It took some poking and prodding to get the ideas flowing.

The old me would have let them off easy.

But I locked in and told them:

“Until we come up with a solution, we’re going to keep having a hard time selling our services. So if you were the owner, what would you do?”

We ended up getting a ton of great ideas.

And a key ingredient to that was, I didn’t judge any ideas negatively.

That’s something else I’ve learned — you have to take the good with the bad when you’re brainstorming.

Lots of ideas will be crazy.

But you won’t get to the crazy good ideas without giving people permission to spit out whatever’s top-of-mind.

Finally, I’ll leave you with one last lesson…

Getting people to think like owners doesn’t happen overnight.

It’s not enough to just give people a bonus plan and say “you can think like an owner now!”

Building that mentality takes time. It’s like a muscle.

And that’s what Open Book Management is really about.

It doesn’t just stop at opening the books — it’s an ongoing process of teaching your people how to make smarter, more profitable decisions with that information.

OBM allows them to:

• Spot when strategies stop working (before your P&L shows it)

• Get creative about new ways to serve clients

• Test and refine solutions faster

• Share in the rewards when they find what works

To learn more about how you can easily start implementing OBM into your own agency:

Book a strategy call with me here.

See you in the next issue of The Winning Agency!

— Nick Kringas
Founder of Open Book CFO