For several years, I’ve argued that performance management is more than just budgeting. I’ve also pointed out that the term planning was often misused by software vendors whose products were mostly limited to financial planning (aka budgeting), rather than end-to-end resource allocation and management. And finally, I’ve advocated outcome-based budgeting, rather than activity-based budgeting, so…
Tag Archives | performance management
Analysts on Strategy Management
By Jonathan Becher on August 4, 2008 in alignment, balanced scorecard, cascade, dashboard, key performance indicators, Leadership, metrics, performance management, strategy, strategy management, vendors
Readers of this blog will know I have a deep affinity for a portion of Performance Management that has come to be known as Strategy Management. The most obvious explanation for my passion is the fact I ran a company often cited as pushing the envelope in strategy management. However, I’ve also always felt the…
Measuring Virtual Events
By Jonathan Becher on July 22, 2008 in blogging, Business, key performance indicators, measurement missteps, metrics, performance management, Web2.0
Partially due to corporate sustainability reasons and partly due to old-fashioned cost savings, I’ve been thinking a lot about virtual events lately. The idea behind virtual events is pretty simple – rather than flying thousands of people to a single destination to discuss a series of topics, you have these discussions on-line. While simple in…
Better Planning and Budgeting
By Jonathan Becher on June 23, 2008 in alignment, financials, metrics, performance management, planning, strategy management
Over at Intelligent Enterprise, an article entitled “How to Get to Better Planning and Budgeting” provides five questions every finance organization should ask: Is the planning and budgeting process as strategic as it could be? Are the budgets as accurate as they should be? Does your planning really help increase your company’s agility? Could your…
Are SMART Goals Stupid?
By Jonathan Becher on June 4, 2008 in key performance indicators, metrics, performance management, scorecard
While I don’t know if I’m “Smarter than a Fifth Grader”, I assumed that I was smarter than a goldfish. But when I read Contrarian Goldfish’s “Smart Goals are Stupid”, I began to wonder. After all, I wrote about the usefulness of SMART objectives. So, let’s investigate: 1. Specific CG says “you cannot predict the…
Beat The Odds
By Jonathan Becher on May 29, 2008 in alignment, books, key performance indicators, measurement missteps, metrics, performance management
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged a book but on the plane back from Germany I stumbled on an email that Nenshad sent me back in Feb with an excerpt from Chapter 9 of “Beat the Odds: Avoid Corporate Death and Build a Resilient Enterprise” by Robert A. Rudzki. In a section called measure…
Performance Anxiety
By Jonathan Becher on May 24, 2008 in balanced scorecard, Culture, dashboard, key performance indicators, measurement missteps, metrics, performance management, strategy management
Bernard Marr must be a believer in my theory that catchy headlines promote increased readership. How else to explain that the long-time performance management guru resorted to the titillating title “Performance Anxiety” for an otherwise solid article on the potential perils of poorly implemented performance systems? Bernard observes that “performance management initiatives were often so…
Trusted Information
By Jonathan Becher on May 11, 2008 in Business, financials, key performance indicators, performance management, strategy
I was deep in conversation with an executive about how to make scorecards more actionable when he said something like: I understand that I should focus on KPIs that are red and trending down but, honestly, I don’t trust the data. This is perhaps the true Achilles Heel of Performance management. If end users don’t trust…
Planning vs. Budgeting
By Jonathan Becher on April 23, 2008 in alignment, comics, financials, performance management, planning, strategy
Openly, I get annoyed when people use the term planning to describe budgeting. While the terms planning and budgeting are often used interchangeably, they’re not the same thing. Budgeting is how you allocate resources (typically financial) to reach specific objectives. Budgeting helps you create an estimate of income and expenses for a specific time period. Budgeting manages money…
Achilles’ other heel
Avisen certainly intrigued me with a post called The Achilles heal (sic) of Performance Management. It’s widely agreed that many performance management projects deliver less value than originally promised. The issue is so endemic that a colleague once asked me “Does performance management have any value?” Imagine my disappointment when, after wading through nearly 1000 words of…