The interest in Beyond Budgeting is today record high, and the model is updated and refined. Beyond Budgeting is adopted by more and more organisations around the world, is taught at business schools, and has a vibrant global community.

One of the most damaging management practices in business today is the individual bonus – “do this and get that”, a practice that now has also found its way into the public sector

There once was a Finance manager who met a fisherman. “Could you please tell me about your life and your work?”, asks the Finance manager. “Well, I am at sea for five months and then I am home for five months”, the fisherman responds. There is a long pause. Our Finance manager is thinking hard. Something is wrong; five plus five is only ten! ”So what are you doing in the two last months?”.

Although Beyond Budgeting is about so much more than just budgets, our name tends to draw people, at least initially, towards the budget word. Once there, cost management often pops up as the number one issue, for obvious reasons. How can we manage cost without a budget?

Beyond Budgeting has now been around for twenty years. More and more companies across the world are embarking on a Beyond Budgeting journey, from global giants to smaller ones not yet strangled by corporate controls and bureaucracy, eager to protect their start-up agility as they grow.

“Control” is an interesting word in the management vocabulary. It is a word many managers struggle with defining. Beyond “cost control”, most are quite vague when it comes to other definitions.