Breaking Bad: Getting to Beyond Budgeting
Breaking Bad: Getting to Beyond Budgeting
Bjarte Bogsnes has worked with companies, from IKEA, H&M,Pernod Ricard, Volvo and Equinor (Scandinavia’s largest company). His approach, “Beyond Budgeting” involves wholesale rethinking about budget approaches. In today’s episode, Bogsnes rails against the “misery” and “borderline unethical behavior” in traditional budgeting within companies, as he talks about the seachange happening in businesses. He talks to Paul Barnhurst as he publishes his new book, This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations (2023).
The episode covers
- Definition of beyond budgeting as an antidote to “serious problems with traditional management”
- How traditional budgeting gets “trust” and “predictability” wrong
- Your answer to “Why are you budgeting?” shows the problems inherent in existing process
- How budget process are “borderline unethical”
- Equinor (Scandinavia’s case study) change
- Making organizations more adaptive and human in the process of transformation
- Don’t start with rolling forecasting
- How a Vinyl collection of 3,5000 is a unique musical passion
- How Beyond Budget “will happen” in the next decade
Links
Bognes Advisory bogsnesadvisory.com
FT (case study of Ikea): CEOs forced to ditch decades of forecasting habits
Bjarte Bogsnes: This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations
Follow Bjarte Bogsnes on LinkedIn
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FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
How to improve your Excel skills
How to improve your Excel skills
In this special FP&A Today episode, Paul is joined by three Excel experts whom Microsoft has recognized as Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs). Learn why it is important to up your Excel game and how you can do it. Below check out offers (saving $$$) from our MVPs exclusively for listeners of FP&A Today.
Get all your questions about Excel answered by the expert panel:
George Mount, Founder Stringfest Analytics
Celia Alves, CEO, Solve and Excel Consulting
Mark Proctor, Excel Off The Grid
In this special episode:
- Our MVPs on when Excel first emerged as a difference-maker in their lives
- George Mount on the failure of finance to adapt to technology
- The challenge of finance teams descending to the lowest common Excel skill set
- The untapped power of PowerQuery and where to start
- The power of prepping your data properly
- Python vs Excel
- Automating Excel reports using Python
- How to deal with tricky Excel issues
- Will Excel go extinct with the rise of AI
- The thing that you absolutely could not live without in Excel
Special Offers Exclusively for FP&A Today listeners
1) George Mount
Subscribe to George’s newsletter to get access to his data analytics resource library and many other goodies https://stringfestanalytics.com/subscribe/
2) Mark Proctor
https://exceloffthegrid.com/fpa is an exclusive offer for our training academy to the listeners of FP&A Today - 30-day full access trial for $1, followed by a $100 annual discount. This is valid until 31 May.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ExcelOffTheGrid
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstephenproctor/
3) Celia Alves
Celia offers an online course about automation of Excel Reporting procedures. Check out the special FP&A Today discount here https://snapreportschamp.com/course
DISCOUNT CODE for 20% OFF: FPA20
(valid up to June 4, 2023).
Subscribe to Celia’s newsletter https://snapreportschamp.com/subscribenewsletter
Celia Alves - Solve & Excel - on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/CeliaAlvesSolveExcel
YouTube video of today's episode
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
Syed Nadeem: Learning from your Failure in FP&A
Syed Nadeem: Learning from your Failure in FP&A
Syed Nadeem is a top finance leader in Saudi Arabia. But the director of Budgeting at listed telecom company, Zain KSA, says he considers his previous failures as pivotal to his position today. He says: “When I was young [and experiencing failure] I felt so disappointed I thought my world was going to end. Sometimes you don't get a promotion and you see other peers getting a promotion. I struggled after getting my CMA (Certified Management Accountant). Sometimes you are not getting good increments, or you are about to hire someone and they reject you. But what I learned is this failure actually makes you strong for the future role.”
Today, he shares his full breadth of experience-both good and bad and explains why he provides (free) mentorships to businesses on a daily basis and to his 15,000 followers on LinkedIn.
In this wide ranging interview Syed explains:
- Uncovering the power of FP&A in companies providing a “helicopter view of companies”.
- The role and limitations of certifications in FP&A
- How “selling” is the core to getting a good job in finance
- The power of technology in FP&A and “unlearning and relearning every day”
- The secrets to effective communication with senior leadership
- How bad experiences make strong finance business leaders
- The secret to talking to Investors in a Language they Understand
Links
Get a free one-to-one career session with Syed at https://calendly.com/syednadeem/connect
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Syed Nadeem on LinkedIn
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
“MoneyBall for FP&A”: Maura Feddersen on Winning in Forecasts
“MoneyBall for FP&A”: Maura Feddersen on Winning in Forecasts
Maura Feddersen, behavioral research manager at Swiss Re, is an economist who previously worked in the economics team of two of the Big Four Accountancy firms: PwC and KPMG.
She got switched on to behavioral economics as “I always felt there was something a bit missing in economics. [Economics] assumes that people act quite rationally…and that was just not the case. Behavioral economics brings together the economics, as well as insights from psychology, to try to assess how humans really make decisions”.
This fascinating episode with Maura, uncovers the lessons that FP&A teams can learn from behavioral economics to improve forecasting and the power of “knowing what knowing what you don’t know.”
This episode includes
- New research revealing that investors predictions are only slightly more accurate than a chimp
- How new forecasting methods improved accuracy at Swiss Re by 5%
- The cognitive biases we need to be aware of that undermine accuracy (such as the dangers of groupthink)
- Meryl Streep’s Oscar nominations and your forecast confidence levels tested
- How to try and manage cognitive bias
- The true economic impact of uncertainty in the global economy and in your business
- The opportunities and limits of AI forecasting
- Using RIO (Rational Impartial Observers)
- The biggest failure in her career
- Favorite Excel function
- Her biggest advice for someone starting out to get really good at forecasting
Further reading
Actuaries magazine: So You Think You Can Underwrite [Maura Fedderson]
Insurers, take heed of these 3 common forecasting fallacies [by Maura Feddersen]
Recommended books
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Paperback - Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner
Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable
Adam Grant, Think Again, The Power of Knowing what you Don’t Know
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
Read the full transcript and blog
Follow Maura Fedderson on LinkedIn
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Get in touch at www.datarails.com
For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to pbarnhust@thefpandaguy.com for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification.