Beyond Budgeting - Fixing the Budget Mess
The audience at LESS 2011 conference was fantastic. Interested, educated, bright, and enthusiastic. Great people to meet and speak with. The chief cause of problems is solutions. –Eric Sevareid At the LESS 2011 conference an entire track was dedicated to solving the problems caused by the annual budgeting systems most organizations use. Yes, caused ! We have used annual budgeting for a long time. This means annual budgeting was created to solve problems in a world quite different from ours: The world moved slower, in more predictable cycles. Today, the world changes very quickly, and is a lot more unpredictable. This is not a bad thing per se. You can turn it to your advantage (which is what I talked about at the conference), but doing that while hanging on to an antiquated economic model is very difficult, to say the least. Does this sound familiar: " Great idea, but we can't do it right now. Let's wait for next year's budget. " The great idea will be ...