Implementing Beyond Budgeting Quotes

“Finance people should remember Albert Einstein’s wise words: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
― Bjarte Bogsnes, Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential

“Another reason why we cannot combine targets and forecasts is because a good target needs to have an element of stretch and ambition. When setting targets, we cannot just sit in a dark room, or look back to last year and add on a few percentages. We need to look out the window to the world outside, to customers, shareholders, communities, and all the other external stakeholders, with expectations about our performance and behavior. While the window is open, it might be wise also to take a look at the competition and how fast it is running. When we close the window and reflect on what we have seen, it is not unlikely that what we have observed has an effect on our ambition level. Setting ambitious targets is less a decision we take and more a consequence of what is happening around us, whether we like what we see or not. At the same time, we need those good and reliable forecasts. We must understand where we are heading, how big the gaps are against our ambitions and targets, and where we need to focus our attention and energy to catch up. Forcing a target and a forecast into one number in one process is almost guaranteed to result in either a bad target or a bad forecast. Or very often both, since we negotiate and compromise and end up with a number somewhere in between.”
― Bjarte Bogsnes, Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential

“It is possible to be centralized and decentralized at the same time: centralized on common processes and support operations, and decentralized on business decisions.”
― Bjarte Bogsnes, Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential

“Former Handelsbanken chief financial officer Lennart Francke has a great metaphor on Beyond Budgeting implementation choices: “Picture a busy London street. Could you imagine the U.K. changing from driving on the left to driving on the right by starting with buses one month, trucks the next, and finally the cars?”
― Bjarte Bogsnes, Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential