Chapter 288

If you want people to get engaged in increasing profits, show them all the financials. - Masterminds

I have seen this work and I have seen this not work. My son works for a logistics company where he has moved from driving a tractor trailer for them, to working in the front office, to being one of their leaders in navigating and finding profitable loads for them. He understands when he finds a lucrative load and makes money for the company he is making money for himself to be paid. He is highly motivated and very good at what he does. My friend owns a business with high overheads and in an attempt to show his workers how their actions cost the company money or make the company money, he shared the financials with them - no change! They just didn’t care, or either they just didn’t understand, or maybe both!

Honestly I don’t understand what makes this work in one situation and not in another situation. And this is impossible for certain types of personalities to do, like one neighbor is so secretive that he won’t say or show a single word about their finances. He is always appalled at my openness and transparency about our financials. He treats financials like State Secrets. I treat them as the semi-public records they are. But everyone is different and some will find the idea of sharing all their company’s financials with employees on a wide scale of impossible to distasteful to difficult to easy. Generally I am for this approach, secrets and obfuscation always work against you in my opinion. If you hired the right people, the more they know about your business to more they can help.