International execs get taste of Great Game of Business

SRC Holdings Corp. last week played host to an international delegation of executives seeking American business advice.

A national business tour, dubbed the Small Giant Safari, stopped Dec. 9 in Springfield, and representatives from companies in the Netherlands and Brazil heard a keynote from SRC CEO Jack Stack and observed his open-book management in practice.

A first-hand experience with operations at companies featured in the book "Small Giants" - written by Stack colleague and tour organizer Bo Burlingham - was one of the reasons Raul Candeloro, president of Brazilian publishing company Editoria Quantum, brought two of his staff members on the tour.

"It's like kicking the tires. We've been asking questions, and it sounds nice," Candeloro said. "But we want to know, is it real?"

The eight staff members from Holland-based consulting firm &Samhoud already had been kicking tires at European companies before joining the U.S. safari, said company founder Salem Samhoud, who hoped to gain an understanding of American business models and practices.

Tips of the tour

One of the things Samhoud has learned on the safari is that there are rewards to be found in smaller gestures, he said. The company already offers large rewards: All 110 &Samhoud staffers came to the United States this year to witness the inauguration of President Barack Obama, Samhoud said, and a trip to South Africa is planned as well.

And the company has been recognized the last two years in the Netherlands as the top workplace with less than 250 employees by the Great Place to Work Institute. If the company wins the same honor in 2010, Samhoud said it has a good chance of being the top place to work in Europe.

Samhoud chalks up the accolades to placing a large emphasis on people. For example, the name, &Samhoud, makes it easy for clients, employees or suppliers to make their names a part of the business, he said.

But in Springfield, Samhoud said he began to see the value of bringing smaller rewards into his business.

Stack talked about his open book management, formally called the Great Game of Business, and the concept of not only recognizing long-term goals with large-scale rewards. Stack advised the group to offer small rewards, such as ice cream or baseball caps, when employees reach short-term goals.

"You can also do special things by doing little things," Samhoud said, "because it revolves around the recognition of people."

Midway through the six-day tour, Candeloro said he'd already written down 17 practices he planned on adopting or adapting at Editora Quantum.

Brooklyn-based data and records storage company CitiStorage was the first company on the tour. It names parts of the company's building after long-term employees, Candeloro said.

"I thought, for an employee to have a room, or (a hallway) with his name, that was great," he said.

Candeloro also thought the employee-training program at Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Zingerman's Community of Businesses was worth incorporating into his own business. The program, called ZingTrain, gives a passport to each new employee, and there are certain objectives an employee has to reach to complete training.

"The worker has to have the passport signed by other people in the companies, which is a good idea. It gives more people responsibility for training," he said.

Samhoud said he thought there might be a way to adapt the open-book management techniques practiced by SRC and other companies on the tour in a way that would fit with &Samhoud's culture, employees and customers.

"There is the command-and-control management technique, and then there is the open-book management technique, which is empowering to people," he said.

Another practice SRC has taught safari attendees is the idea of playing games to meet financial or numeric goals.

"People like games. I have never thought that games were something you could bring into a company," Samhoud said.

Educational exchange

There was a lot to take in during the six-day safari. And Samhoud said American companies could learn just as much from companies like the companies on the safari, as well as the one he founded. At &Samhoud, there is a desire to build a brighter future, and the way to do that is by connecting people, he said.

"If people are more connected to each other, they are more connected to themselves, and they are better able to connect to the organization they work for and also the society," Samhoud said. "What I feel here in the U.S., is that people are not connected to themselves. ... That's, I think, something the U.S. can learn from us. ... We put people totally first."[[In-content Ad]]