“God bless us, every one!” said Tiny Tim at the end of Charles Dickens’s classic tale A Christmas Carol. Scrooge had become a new man, and Bob Cratchit’s family was about to enjoy a big turkey dinner.
The story is a reminder that this is the season of giving. And many people do give, and not just to family members. They donate to the Salvation Army and other organizations. They give to churches, to hospitals, and to newspaper drives on behalf of the needy. It’s a valuable tradition, and it warms the heart.
But the holiday season soon comes to an end, and that’s a reminder that giving by itself is never enough. Give a man a fish, says the famous adage, and you have fed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime. People eventually need to make their own way and earn their own living.
What does it mean to “teach a man (or woman) to fish” in the 21st century? This is a time of technology, of globalization, of fast-changing markets. What does it take for someone to be self-sufficient?
People obviously need education and skills. We’ll leave that part of the equation to the experts, of whom there are many. The experts haven’t yet solved the problem of how to deliver good education effectively, but we don’t pretend to know the solutions either.
We do know a little about business, which is no small part of the equation. Nearly everyone in today’s world lives in some sort of capitalist society. To survive and prosper, most people need to start a business or work in one. You might even say that understanding business is the modern equivalent of learning to fish.
The trouble is, most people don’t understand business. They show up for work every day and do what they’re told, but they rarely know the reasons for what they’re doing. They understand the what and the how, but not the why. That’s doubly true when a company tries to make changes in its business—launching a new product, say, or increasing its prices, or cutting back on one of its operations. The usual reactions are a shake of the head and a roll of the eyes: “I hope they know what they’re doing.” The unspoken sequel is: “Because I sure don’t.”
A fundamental objective of open-book management is to help people cross this chasm of ignorance. When a company shares its key numbers, employees naturally begin to ask questions. They want to know what makes the numbers go up or down, and what they can do to help move them in the right direction. Pretty soon they come to understand words and phrases like profitability, cost of goods sold, and gross margin. When a change is proposed, they want to know why—and they are likely to understand the reasons behind the proposal. Indeed, they’re likely to come up with proposals of their own, because they have learned to think like businesspeople rather than like hired hands.
We’ve seen this happen countless times: among the pilots at Southwest Airlines, among the back-office crew at Capital One, among the miners at Zambia Consolidated Copper Mine, among the travel agents at CarlsonWagonlit, among rank-and-file employees at hundreds of smaller companies. When you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, “work” suddenly takes on new meaning. People become part of a team with goals and objectives. They want to win.
But even more important, they have a new skill. They have some understanding of the economic context they will likely be working in for the rest of their lives. They know how a business operates, and they know how they can contribute to its success. They have learned to fish.
We hope you and your families have a wonderful holiday, as good as Bob Cratchit’s or Tiny Tim’s, complete with plenty of gift-giving and of course that turkey or whatever else you like to eat. And then, when the season is over, we hope you will help your employees or the people you work with learn to fish. “God bless us, every one!”
