Beyond Budgeting Quotes

“Making a fixed promise that is subject to high levels of uncertainty and then requiring people to meet that promise at all costs is like putting the performance cart before the horse. The result is likely to be the distortion of profitability over time and, in exceptional circumstances, outright fraud.”
― Jeremy Hope, Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap

“group executives still have an important role to play in the development of strategy. For example, they set values, boundaries, direction, and guidelines for strategy development and decision making, and then challenge the plans and ambitions of business unit managers. This process is done in broad strokes, and quickly. There are few detailed submissions and presentations. The only exception is if new capital expenditures or other major resource requirements are needed to support strategic options.”
― Jeremy Hope, Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap

“Fostering relationships across the organization is seen as the important element in creating coordinated actions. A strong commitment to a common set of values provides the framework for this process. Everyone thinks about the customer. Product”
― Jeremy Hope, Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap

“beating the competition or one’s peers is a far more powerful weapon than financial incentives. Why do people need cash incentives to fulfill their work obligations to colleagues and customers? It is recognition of effort that is important. Managers will only strive to achieve ambitious goals if they know that their ‘best efforts’ will be recognized and not punished if they fail to get all the way.”
― Jeremy Hope, Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap

“[A] ccounting results dominated most managers’ attention to the point where they no longer knew, or cared, about the production, technological, and marketing determinants of competitiveness.”
― Jeremy Hope, Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap