I have a correction.
Rather than running it in the normal correction box opposite this Opinion page, this correction merits some of my column space. You see, the error was published on this page in an Oct. 12 Eyes & Ears column.
It also was stated in video posted to sbj.net.
Turns out, financial statements are not 556 years old. The current formula and presentation were not developed in 1453.
I say this because my column and the video clips quoted Jack Stack with this historical business nugget.
Truth is, they are 515 years old.
Stack recently pointed this out to me and handed me his revision of fact that states a Venetian monk first published accounting statements in 1494. Those forms are virtually unchanged, according to MoneyInstructor.com
Stack personally delivered me this new knowledge while I was at his office for Great Game of Business training. I thought it was a great gesture to take time out of his company's training day - even work it into his keynote that morning - and deliver me the factual document that proved his erroneous statement. Of course, the error was not intentional nor was it detrimental to the point.
As I told Stack that morning, to be within 50 years of a 500-year span is fair. His point remains: Financial statements are old. And worse, they're difficult to put into laymen's terms and even harder to know how one person can affect the numbers. Stack doesn't just leave it at that or simply offer some ill-proven hypothesis of how to update them. He lived out a revision of hard-to-read financials in turning around his manufacturing employer in the early 1980s. Now, he preaches the good word of open-book management through Great Game of Business, one of SRC Holding Cos.' many companies.
Springfield Business Journal has reported on this practice and even operated with its own books open for years. Now, we're listening intently. We only looked at the financials as a team for the sake of review. The full training by Great Game officials involves real management of the numbers by all people concerned. It means employees think and act like owners.
And that's where SBJ is headed. Publisher Dianne Elizabeth Osis and her management team have jumped into Great Game's training and will be bringing the principles and practices in house during the first quarter of next year.
I'm anxious to determine the company's critical number and to start playing games, both by department and in work groups, to move that number in the direction we as a staff determine it should go. In the next step, each staff member will be interviewed by a Great Game coach to help identify the threats or weaknesses of our company faces over the long haul.
Let the games begin.[[In-content Ad]]
Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.
