Game Changers: Jack Stack

Most business experts would say to run from a company with a debt-to-equity ratio of 89-1. Not Jack Stack. He led a team to embrace their employer’s upside-down financials while rescuing an International Harvester plant from closure and turning it into Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. The gutsy – and ultimately victorious – $9 million acquisition by Stack, 12 managers and some 180 employees in 1983 started the engine toward SRC Holdings Corp.’s 23 company, $400 million portfolio.

As SRC Holdings’ CEO, Stack’s secret is his open-book management philosophy intended to give employees the tools to think and act like owners all across SRC’s companies in agricultural, industrial, construction and automotive markets. Two books co-written by Stack, “The Great Game of Business” and “A Stake in the Outcome,” attracted the national spotlight and spawned Great Game, a business of its own to teach the strategy and sell franchises.

He’s received Inc.’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Springfield Business Journal’s Lifetime Achievement in Business and Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s Springfieldian awards.

One of SBJ's 31 Game Changers in conjunction with Springfield Business Journal's 31st anniversary.[[In-content Ad]]