They Just Don't Get It!

deliberately connected, organizations can achieve results that neither side could deliver alone.

Open-Book Management at RR Donnelley’s Northeastern Division In “Opening the Books” (Harvard Business Review, 1997), John Case introduced the concept of open-book management (OBM), showing how companies that teach employees to understand financial results and connect daily work to profits can transform skepticism into engagement. Rather than telling people what to do, OBM gives them the why, empowering teams to think and act like owners. Case specifically highlighted the initiative led by Don Robb in Donnelley’s Northeastern Division, where he championed open-book practices to involve the entire workforce in understanding and improving the business’s performance. Working in partnership with Jack Stack’s Great Game of Business coaching group, Robb helped bring the principles of the Great Game— originally proven in smaller entrepreneurial settings— to one of the largest printing companies in the world. The Donnelley initiative became one of the earliest large-scale applications of OBM, proving that the

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