Budget or Hunting Season?

Budget season is here! But wait, when did this become a season?!? When did we decide to spend 4-5 months a year budgeting for the next year when we have yet to finish the current year? Who thought it was a great idea to take the focus off of our strategies for the last quarter of the year so we could build a budget for the next?

Budget season is the equivalent of hunting season. Someone give me the gun and just let me shoot myself. I'm not suicidal, just metaphorically describing what happens when I build the budget zero-based, based on last year, or per a proforma, and you shoot it down.?

When we come to the table, we are ready for battle because experience has taught us that you will "shoot holes" through our budget presentation. Even when we come with strategy in hand, you are so sure that there must be more hidden away in our coffers that even a thesis written on our strategy is not enough. As Dr. Phil reminds us, "You teach people how to treat you," therefore, we now behave exactly as you wish and hold back so we have something to give you when you inevitably shoot us down.?

?Or do you prefer pickleball? Match point...

Walking into the budget presentation is much like a pickleball match. We present a defendable budget; you hit it back with a fierce backhand, and we trip trying to volley it back, swing, and miss. We return to the drawing table, rethinking our strategies, reinforcing our budget for the next match, and hoping to deliver that final volley for the win.?

Back to budget target practice...?

The entire scenario serves no one. The person shooting the budgets down has a false sense of winning. The reality is that pushing back without giving expectations before or after only serves as ignorance. The person revising budgets again and again gets to a point where they give you what you want. No one wins because giving in is equivalent to giving up.?

The bottom line is that budgeting does not move us closer to the optimization of revenue or profit. It distracts from the execution of the current year because it requires an immense amount of focus and revision. Unfortunately, in the end, we aligned the numbers to the target only afforded us after our psychic abilities failed.

Let's get back to winning. Put budgets back where they belong as a task and not a season. What might it look like if we:

1. Budget for next year by month as we actualize in the current year. When are you better equipped to make assumptions about March of next year than as it actualized this year? Why do we think we can better assume March next year's budget in October when the season has been declared?
2. Write the strategy as for next year as this year actualizes. There is no better time to know what to do different than when you are on the right side of hindsight.
3. Give up the targets; budgeting is not target practice! In today's environment, financial expectations drive the bottom-line expectations. Give us the targets and save us hours to achieve targets that don't hit the mark.

I wish you well as you march into the budget season and close with one piece of advice,

Don't bring a noodle to a gun fight. ?

Lori Kiel

www.lorikiel.com

Previous articles: https://lorikiel.com/back-to-school-budget-501-ap-or-bs/