Budget time

We're heading towards Christmas. Ooops, sorry, the Holiday season is approaching. But before that it's the feast of budgeting.

Do you believe any of your planning and thinking ends up in the corporate budgets? Of course not.

Truth is that most budgets equal whatever you did this year plus 10% revenue minus 10% cost. Giver or take some percentage points. God forbid any new investments if you're out in the field.

In the best case VP looks at market trend charts like this and tells you how much you need to do to keep up with competition.


Hmm, don't they always look like this? Even the year before the dot.com slump. Does anybody really look back? Hindsight is a scary thing because it means you have to analyze your mistakes. VP doesn't like that too much.

And VP really believes in charts like this:



VP will use words like "synergies" and "optimize" to push you to do more with less. OK, I guess it's a good thing as a principle to be more effective as you move forward.

But it's Corporate BS because: The bigger the gap, the higher the VP's bonus gets. And do you think VP will lose his job when you don't succeed. Maybe, but only after you lost yours.