> MetaManagement Group - Beyond Budgeting In-House Workshop

In-House Workshop on Beyond Budgeting

'Beyond Budgeting' In-House Workshop
Enabling a lean, adaptive and ethical enterprise

'Beyond Budgeting' is a radical alternative to the traditional management model with its annual planning and budgeting cycle and 'command and control' culture. The difference between the two approaches amounts to a transformation in the way a company is managed. While an organization may choose an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary approach to implementing it, the change program will always be a significant challenge.

Are these your organization's aims?

Do you want to:

		Sustain superior profitability relative to others in your industry?
		Respond faster to changing conditions and new business opportunities?
		Offer your customers more value than your competitors?
		Encourage greater self-motivation and productivity among your employees?
		Adopt best practices and operate at lower costs than your competitors?
		Unleash the full potential of tools and techniques, such as the Balanced Scorecard, and Activity Based Management?
		Eliminate internal "gaming" and promote high ethical standards?

If so, your organization will benefit from this workshop.

What we offer in this workshop

While many people are convinced by the principles of beyond budgeting, few have felt sufficiently confident to sell the case for change to senior executive sponsors inside their organizations. This is not surprising. The issues are complex and the alternative model must be explained as a coherent whole. This workshop aims to address these problems. It is designed to help delegates make a compelling case to their senior executives, including a “Case for Change and Vision Report” based on how they would implement the “beyond budgeting” principles inside their own organization. It will be particularly appropriate for those who are already committed to changing their performance management processes or are using tools such as the Balanced Scorecard but failing to realize the full benefits. The workshop program will be highly interactive and offer plenty of opportunity for discussion.

Who will benefit

Anyone interested in changing the fundamentals of their performance management processes will benefit from this workshop. This includes managing directors, finance directors, controllers, planners and managers, operational directors and managers (sales, marketing, production, logistics), human resource directors and managers, IT directors and managers, strategy people, change management directors, and so forth. The key to a successful workshop is to bring together the right mix of people to challenge the concepts presented with open minds, discuss the issues freely, and have the courage and energy to think through an appropriate alternative model. The people chosen should be opinion shapers, so that they can become ambassadors for the new approach, if they are convinced of its appropriateness.

A typical workshop program

The program can be tailored to suit the organization, but it is typically divided into eight sessions over two or two and a half days. The purpose is to have covered all the issues that are pertinent to participants developing a full ‘case for change’ report that they can use to make a presentation to top management in their own organizations. Each session, apart from the first, will start with a short presentation by the workshop leader followed by a task that will involve some individual and group work followed by a general discussion. These syndicate exercises will be facilitated by experienced consultants. The eight sessions comprise:

	1.	Understand the Beyond Budgeting cases and the principles of the model
	2.	Design in outline an alternative overall management model
	3.	Evaluate and design alternative processes for target setting and rewards
	4.	Evaluate and design alternative planning processes
	5.	Evaluate and design alternative control processes
	6.	Learn how to release the full potential of the toolset
	7.	Consider how the new model can be implemented and make an outline
	8.	Build a business case and present it to the Board

In short:

This is a 2-3 day workshop designed to be held within a single organization. It aims to help participants grasp the concepts of the "Beyond Budgeting" management model, relate them to the organization in practical terms, and make a "case for change". It would typically be attended by a senior group of some 10 -12 people drawn from Finance and other functions (e.g. line management and human resources).

Download the Beyond Budgeting In-House Workshop brochure as an Acrobat file

- in Portuguese
- in German

The ‘Beyond Budgeting’ web-based diagnostic

In preparation for the workshop participants are invited to complete a web-based diagnostic which helps to orientate them towards the issues to be addressed in the workshop.

Immediately after participants complete and submit their questionnaire, the system generates reports that are sent to them to show how their responses benchmark against the ‘Beyond Budgeting’ model. These may be edited by the participant, and finally after every participant has completed the questionnaire the system can produce a workshop report that compares each participant’s results with the range of results of the other participants.

While keeping confidential the identity of individual results, the report highlights areas where views are close together or divergent. The diagnostic may also be completed again after the workshop to see how opinions have changed.

Workshop presenters

The workshops will be presented by Niels Pflaeging alone or in conjunction with a senior consultant from an acknowledged firm of management consultants. The benefit of the latter combination is that the consultant would be available to provide assistance in the subsequent stages of the work, if the organization wanted to implement the model and use consultants.

Alternatively, the workshop can in some cases be held in conjunction with one of the European BBRT research leaders, which include Jeremy Hope, Robin Fraser, Peter Bunce and Franz Roeoesli.