Open-book management

Definition

Sharing the company's real numbers with the staff who move them, on a schedule.

Why It Matters

A new owner arrives with a debt schedule and a team that has never seen a P&L, which is the gap this closes: people who know the gross margin on a job price it differently from people who do not. The discipline is a weekly or monthly number posted where the crew works, tied to something they can change, and it fails when the numbers arrive without the authority to act on them. It is also the cheapest retention tool a first-time owner has, because a team shown the arithmetic stops guessing what the new owner is taking out.

In numbers: A crew of twelve shown a weekly gross margin of 38% against a 42% target will chase the four points; the same crew shown only revenue has no number to chase.