informal coalitions

Managing budgets – it’s all talk!

Peter Drucker once said that budgeting is not a financial process. 

“Only the notation is financial,” he argued, “The decisions are entrepreneurial.” 

This is an important insight that is often overlooked in the number-focused ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ that typically dominates formal budgeting rounds.  As the term was originally conceived, an entrepreneur is someone who creates value by moving resources from areas of low productivity to areas of higher productivity. So, rather than starting with the numbers, Drucker’s observation implies that managers should focus their attention on how best to acquire, deploy and manage the resources needed to deliver the organization’s business agenda.  The budget itself simply expresses the consequences of this managerial activity in financial terms.

Evaluating organizational interventions - The challenge of complexity

"The idea of a plane outside the world on which to stand has become a fundamental myth of our culture. The myth has most often taken the form of a spectator view of knowledge – the notion that we can stand aside from the action and comment upon it from a detached viewpoint."

Bruce Gregory - Inventing Reality

Yesterday afternoon, I attended an excellent meeting in London, at which Roffey Park’s Liz Finney and Carol Jefkins shared the output of their research into the evaluation of OD interventions (copies can be purchased here). Their work provides a thorough review of current thinking and practice in this aspect of organisation development. The research is presented in an easily digestible form. And the authors offer practitioners a "toolkit" of potential interventions to evaluate the conduct and impact of their work.

But is their prescription credible in the complex world of organizational dynamics?