“Business can be a step to make a positive difference in the world. It empowers people to pursue their dreams.” Those are the opening words that Jack Stack and I wrote in our new book, Change the Game: Saving the American Dream By Closing the Gap Between the Haves and the Have-notes. Our goal in writing the book was to share stories about the brighter side of capitalism. We wanted to show real-life examples about how we can create better lives for ourselves and our communities—and bridge the wealth gap plaguing our society—by teaching people the rules of business, helping them keep score, and by sharing A Stake in the Outcome®. We wanted to shed light on the positive ripple effect that results when you build a business of business-people who think and act as owners do.

I’d like to tell you a story. Let me begin with a disclaimer, it’s not about winning big or how The Great Game of Business® instantly made us hugely profitable and loads of fun. It’s a terrible story about losing. Also, I have not been involved in open-book management or The Great Game of Business very long. Truth be told, I’m about as green as anyone can be. Here’s the 10 second backstory – AMBAC International has been manufacturing precision engine components for over 100 years. The men and women on the shop floor know what they’re doing. I’ll tell anyone they’re the best in the world, and I’ve got the data to back that up. But, the shop floor wasn’t really connected to the ‘business’ and everyone suffered from poor corporate performance as a result. In fact, we were in real danger of losing the company.

There is a secret weapon in the fight against COVID-19: America’s urgent care clinics. While Americans have long relied on these walk-in clinics for help in overcoming ailments like the flu and mononucleosis, the fear of COVID has kept people away from healthcare centers across the country. Lacking adequate personal protection equipment, urgent care center visit volumes, decreased 50% almost overnight.

We all know some version of the line that appears in the iconic film, The Godfather, where Michael Corleone says to his brother, Sonny: “It’s not personal…it’s strictly business.” Turns out that the phrase was reportedly coined in real life by a guy named Otto Berman, who also happened to be an accountant for organized crime families. With a checkered origin like this, why has this phrase become so wildly accepted?

The big payoff to us for playing The Game is that we become a more educated, more flexible organization. We can respond instantaneously to changes in the market. We can turn on a dime for a customer if we have to. We can respond to problems in the length of time it takes to place a phone call. We can do all that because we have a company filled with people who not only are owners, but who also think and act like owners, not like employees. That’s an important distinction. Getting people to think and act like owners goes far beyond giving them equity.

What is an effective way of developing a sense of ownership? Over the years, I have talked to several business owners who want their employees to think and act like owners. They want them to be engaged and passionate about their jobs and the workplace culture. They want them to enjoy coming to work. Workplace culture in an employee-owned company should come easily, right? These owners often see setting up an ESOP as a way to change the organization’s culture and instill the aforementioned traits of thinking and acting like an owner. Two or three years later, I talk to some of the same owners, who once saw the ESOP as a cure for their cultural problems and now blame the ESOP and the employees for their inability to create an ownership culture. They say: “I started this ESOP thinking that it would make all my employees care about their jobs. The dream of an ESOP ownership culture hasn’t done anything. In fact, their behavior is worse now.” One would ask: “Why is it worse?” The answer is that these owners were using leadership to manage employees before the ESOP, and after the ESOP, they quit leading and managing them at all because they thought the ESOP would do this for them. I’ve heard of several cases like this. So, if the ESOP is not going to be the magic potion, what is?