Details grow from the bottom up, i.e. how many paperclips do we use, how many will we use next year.

Abstractions start from the top and bubble down, i.e. generally there will be less revenue by x percentage and as such activity in these areas are reduced by x.

Let’s put the two together.  It goes a little something like this…

I said that your staff needs you.

They need to be assured that you are aware of them, their concerns, their needs, their impact and contributions to this corporation.

What they don’t need is to hear you rant about you, your insecurities, your rehash of the same old excuses or your intense study on the minutiae of the less significant.

Step up [please].

Perhaps it’s the overwhelmed executive mired down in the myriad of pragmatic politics and thus unable to shepherd her directorate flock through the barbed budgetary process.

Who then takes up the mantle and leads?  What direction are we headed?  Do we fight the ‘good’ fight of charting the true dimensions of the complete needs, answering the question – what currently missing elements if provided will enable a full and complete operation?

Or do we instead put our collective shoulders into the load and bear down to the immense task of reducing need into a palatable nugget of justification imbued with enhanced service or some other such desirable attribute.

Is there a place for needs-based budgeting?  Essential practice or exercise in delusion?  What say you?

Welcome. I’m so glad you’ve come.