When Tom Campbell
arrived at Quick
Solutions Inc. in 2000, he encountered a challenging —
but not unpleasant — management dilemma.
Quick Solutions had adopted
an employee stock ownership
plan in 1999, and employees
initially owned 5 percent of
the business. Two years later,
their ownership interest had
grown to 15 percent, and they
wanted information about
their company.
“The employees wanted to
know more about this business
and how it worked,” says
Campbell, who is co-owner,
chairman and CEO of the IT
consulting firm.
After reading Jack Stack’s
“The Great Game of Business”
and studying open-book management, Campbell realized that
he needed to move in that direction and be more open with his
employees. And that need for
more information has grown, as
employees now own 34 percent
of the business, which posted
2007 revenue of $28.1 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Campbell about how he opens
his books to his 250 employees.
Q. How do you introduce
open-book management to
employees?
At one of our quarterly meetings, I gave a presentation on
why it was a good practice. I
bought 25 or 30 copies of Jack
[Stack]’s book and passed them
out to people, and from there,
people read them and passed
them around.
People want to know what’s
going on in the company they
work for, and they want to be a
part of it. People are pretty
amazing; if you give them
opportunity and you’re open
and honest with them, they
become a lot more dedicated.
The business becomes a part of
their family.
It was hard at first because
back in 1999 to 2000, we had
a lot of mistrust between
employees and management:
‘Management gave me this
information, but how do I know
it’s real and that it’s right?’ You
have to break the mistrust barrier. I inundated them and
gave them information
until they told me to stop,
and then we were able to
back it off.
You work your way
through it.
