Jack Stack, the founder, president and CEO of SRC Holdings, will give the commencement address at Ozarks Technical Community College’s commencement ceremony on Thursday, May 19, at 5 p.m. The event will be held at the Great Southern Bank Arena on the Missouri State University Campus.
Stack has been called the “smartest strategist in America” by Inc. Magazine and one of the “top 10 minds in small business” by Fortune Magazine. A pioneer of the leadership model known as open-book management, Stack is the author of three books on the subject, “The Great Game of Business,” “A Stake in the Outcome” and “Change the Game.” His expertise in using the open-book model has helped SRC Holdings Corporation start, acquire, and own over 60 businesses and create thousands of jobs since 1983. Along the way, SRC’s stock value has increased 360 thousand percent.
Stack has served as a world judge for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards Institute and as an advisor for that group since 1998. Stack designed the first-ever United Way Entrepreneurial Fund to encourage innovation within the non-profit community. He has also served as a contributor for Inc. magazine and The New York Times and has addressed thousands of audiences on open-book management. Stack has five children and twelve grandchildren.
Located in Springfield, Mo., SRC Holdings Corporation is a 100% Employee-Owned Company employing more than 1,800 people, with sales of over $600 million. While SRC’s chief business is remanufacturing vehicle assemblies, the company is best known for being the birthplace of open-book management. Once a failing division of International Harvester, SRC made national headlines when Stack used unconventional measures to turn the company around.
Under Stack’s leadership, employees started playing “The Great Game of Business®.” The Game was a way to teach employees how the business worked in an unintimidating way that would make sense to everyone: using the analogy of a game. Using this method, SRC became one of the biggest turn-around stories of its time.
Forty years later, SRC Holdings Corporation operates ten business units, including joint ventures with Case New Holland and Navistar. SRC Holdings Corporation has received international recognition because of its success, including the Top 100 Companies to Work for in America, WorldBlu Most Democratic Workplaces, the National Business Ethics Award, and the Business Enterprise Trust Award.