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Hangers Without Hooks, and What They Say About Beyond Budgeting
In a hotel again recently: those hangers without hooks. Ever since Bjarte Bogsnes used a similar image at our customer conference two years ago, they always make me think of Beyond Budgeting.
The hanger only works with its matching counterpart. It stands for an understanding of steering that produces security through control.
Beyond Budgeting describes a different model: set direction, put responsibility where the business is, and stay steerable through transparency.
Concretely: classical planning often bundles contradictory purposes into one set of numbers. Target setting, forecast, resource allocation, performance evaluation. Beyond Budgeting deliberately separates them. Targets are set independently of the forecast. Performance is judged relatively, against the market, against peers, against a unit’s own potential. And a forecast becomes what it is supposed to be again: an unbiased view forward.
So why do we see it so rarely in practice?
We demand ever more adaptability. And carry on steering with a methodology built for fixed points.