The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting. A new Operating System for Organisations: What it is and Why it Works (PDF)

This is a short guide to Beyond Budgeting, a set of concepts that help organisations to build Management Models that are more agile, less bureaucratic and less prone to dysfunctional gaming behaviours than those based on traditional annual budgeting and a 'command and control' leadership style.

Aimed at busy people, it is written in a simple and direct style, and can be read in less time than it takes you to fly between any two cities.

It is ideal introduction for practical people who are looking to understand how Beyond Budgeting works, why it is better than traditional budgeting and its implications for the rest of the business.

In a series of short chapters it describes how budgeting problems manifest themselves and where the idea of Beyond Budgeting came about. It goes on to decompose traditional budgeting processes and contrast this with typical Beyond Budgeting processes, which achieve the same goals by different means.

The reason why Beyond Budgeting succeeds is that is complies with a little know law described by systems theorists over half a century ago: 'Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety'. And the book goes on to explain the implications for this for organisational design and leadership, thus explaining the other half of the Beyond Budgeting model.

Finally the implications of Beyond Budgeting for the rest of the business and some of the challenges of introducing change of this nature are discussed.

Note that this generates a unique watermarked PDF file and cannot not be shared without the authors permission.

About the Author

Steve Morlidge has been involved with Beyond Budgeting since its inception in 1998. As Controller of one of Unilever's largest subsidiaries he was one of the original sponsors and he subsequently led a Beyond Budgeting change project for the whole enterprise.

He is the author of six books on Beyond Budgeting related topics and completed a PhD exploring the links between Beyond Budgeting and systems theory. He is a visiting Professor at BBP University and a visiting fellow at Cranfield University.

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