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    Leadership: the Key Ingredient to a Great Budget
    Leadership: the Key Ingredient to a Great Budget
    Leadership: the Key Ingredient to a Great Budget
    Ebook162 pages1 hour

    Leadership: the Key Ingredient to a Great Budget

    By Ron Rael

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    About this ebook

    During the fall season, there are two tasks that occur each year.  The first is going back to school.  The second is beginning the laborious budgeting process.

    While the first task is dreaded by many children, the second is dreaded by almost every manager and executive.  However, both are a fact of life!  Rather than fight these activities, it is more productive to change attitudes toward going back to school and doing your budget.

    Preparing a budget does not have to be the painful and time-consuming activity that you dread. In fact, preparing your budget could be as easy as making a pie.  This is because of Budgeting Principle Number 1: “Budgeting is easy. It is everything else that makes it hard.”

    There is a new book, just issued, which proves that budgeting is a simple yet powerful leadership activity that will help an organization prosper.  Getting to that point will require an attitude change and an improvement in leadership.

    Ron Rael, CPA, CGMA, just published an intriguing and innovative book on the overlooked connection between good budgeting and good leadership.  “To have a great budget you must have good stewardship over the planning process and the entire organization.  When an organization has great leadership, it will have a great budget and a planning process that is simple and smooth.”

    What makes Ron’s book unique is that it consists of 14 stories about organizations that did budgeting right and wrong.  Each narrative contains key lessons and take-aways that will apply to your organization.  The book is easy-to-read.  Its interesting format encourages the leaders of an organization to look in the mirror and see how well they are doing in their efforts to develop a budget and plan for the future.

    The organizations that have followed Ron’s advice and improved the quality of their leadership of the process shortened the length of time it takes to prepare their budget and removed the pain and suffering that often comes from numerous reiterations and unsupportable goals.

    As Ron says, “The budget is a management tool that is often misunderstood and used incorrectly.  When developed properly, the budget allows leaders to feel more in control, while empowering employees to do what they must do well – take care of customers and execute the goals.”

    Leadership: The Key Ingredient to a Great Budget is available on Kindle and other e-readers.  It would be wise and in your best interest to read the book before you kick off this year’s budgeting process.  You will be glad you did.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRon Rael
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9781386684619
    Leadership: the Key Ingredient to a Great Budget

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      Book preview

      Leadership - Ron Rael

      Leadership: The Key Ingredient to a Great Budget

      13½ Breakthrough Tactics for Doing It Right

      Ron Rael

      Copyright

      First published 2016 in the United States of America

      © 2016 Ron Rael

      All rights reserved in all media. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

      High Road® is a registered trademark of The High Road Institute, all rights reserved. 13½ Rules™, 13½ Natural Laws™, and Budget Wars™ are trademarks of The High Road Institute, all rights reserved.

      Dedication

      I dedicate this book to my many teachers, resource managers, senior managers, executives and business owners. From each of you I learned valuable lessons. Some of you showed me the proper way to lead, others showed me how not to lead.

      I dedicate this also to the CPAs who faced similar challenges about budgeting and planning. Many of the lessons and best practices I share on budgeting came from these talented women and men. You shared tools you discovered or created, and I thank you for brainstorming strategies with me.

      Lastly, I give a shout out to the AICPA, an organization committed to enhancing the reputation of the accounting profession. When they hired me to teach for them and then later asked me to author courses, they provided an opportunity to meet and interact with over 12,000 CPAs and Chartered Accountants. This mutually beneficial relationship was the catalyst for growing into a thought leader on budgeting and planning.

      Acknowledgements

      Behind every accomplished leader is a team of talented dedicated people. For me, the finest support is delivered by Darcy Juarez and Michelle Cash. Other members of my team are the talented Jocelyn Toolie® Garner, who edited and formatted this book, and Lacey Jane who designed the book's cover.

      Table of Contents

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Acknowledgements

      Foreward

      Frequently Asked Questions

      Introduction

      Cause and Effect of the Flawed Budget

      Leadership is the Key Ingredient

      Context about Leadership

      Why I Wrote this Book

      How to Use This Book

      Context About Budgeting

      Rules for Great Budgeting

      Key Budgeting Definitions

      Chapter 1: Who Won and Who Lost?

      Chapter 2: Defeated from the Start!

      Chapter 3: Who is Controlling This Train Wreck?

      Chapter 4: The No Budget Budget!

      Chapter 5: We Were Budget Virgins!

      Chapter 6: We Want You to Build Us a Budget!

      Chapter 7: Slop on the Peanut Butter!

      Chapter 8: Ask and You Shall Receive? — Part 1

      Chapter 9: Ask and You Shall Receive! — Part 2

      Chapter 10: Share the Wealth!

      Chapter 11: The Mushroom Effect!

      Chapter 12: The Monkey See, Monkey Do Game!

      Chapter 13: Give Us Liberty (or at Least Freedom of Choice)!

      Chapter 13½: Three Steps Forward, One Step Backward

      Final Exam on Bad Budgeting

      Ron Rael, Leadership Coach

      Schedule Ron Rael, the Leadership Provocateur, to Speak at Your Next Event

      Foreward

      foreward n:

      Anti-backwards

      Frequently Asked Questions

      Q Why did you write this book?

      A Whenever someone like me begins to speak on the budget, people's eyes glaze over or they run from the room. Once I tried gluing my audience to their seats, but they shed their clothes and then bolted! So I wrote this book using real stories to make budgeting come alive for people. Stories hold people's attention as we learn lessons from them.

      Q Why do you use 13½ tactics in this book?

      A I hope to get superstitious people to also buy this book!

      Q Why do you break your information into rules, tactics, and lessons?

      A I believe in inclusiveness! Artistic types follow simple concepts. Business types believe in principles. Disciplinarians embrace strict rules. War-mongers love tactics. Perfectionists love numbers.

      Q Why do you always use the ½ in your titles?

      A Because no one else does!

      Q Can you be serious? Why use the ½?

      A No. Yes. Maybe. I use the final ½ to remind you that the next step is up to you. I can provide you with leading-edge information and innovative ideas. If you do nothing with it, then no improvements will take place.

      I believe you want to use my insightful information to transform something important, like your budget, and strive for continuous improvement.

      Introduction

      You want a great budget. You would settle for an adequate budget. Instead, you have a flawed one. You want to know why and of course how to improve the quality of your budget.

      Every journey starts with awareness.

      A budget is a tool designed to help the organization's leaders to:

      Plan for the future and predict what could happen.

      Fund the activities that carry out the mission.

      Achieve goals.

      Provide global focus.

      Define what success looks like.

      Yet, more than 75% of budgets are flawed! Included in this jaw-dropping amount are organizations that fail to budget, fail to plan, don't forecast their future, or build a budget without doing any long-range planning.

      If you understand the principle of cause and effect it is easy to see why such a high number of organizations waste 120 days or more and 20% of their executives' time working on and producing something that provides little or no value once it is completed.

      Cause and Effect of the Flawed Budget

      Many budget managers and finance executives believe that a bad budget results from:

      A lack of accountability

      Poor or incomplete planning

      Unclear plans and direction

      Too many changes

      An incomplete or informal business model

      A severe lack of resources

      A shortage of time to create

      Too many competing priorities, and

      Many more reasons I have heard.

      These excuses are not the causes of a bad budget; they are merely the outcomes or effects. The true and only cause of a bad budget is poor leadership!

      We begin your journey of groundbreaking insights by exploring the first of helpful insights.

      First Natural Law of Budgeting

      A budget is a powerful tool to help leaders make smarter and wiser decisions.

      The budget and all the planning that goes into making a budget will be flawed when the leaders of an organization (and this could be you) don't plan, don't enforce accountability, lack a vision, are too busy to plan, don't hold themselves accountable, fail to set achievable goals, communicate poorly or not at all, don't ask for help, refuse to solicit employee input, don't want resource managers involved with the planning process, don't listen to their customers, create a weak board of directors, fail to set policies or refuse to follow them, lack a vibrant, sustainable business model, and act unethically.

      When one or more of these conditions exist, you will produce poor results in many areas, and one of them is the budget. Your budget and

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