Clone Your Superstars. When certain team members consistently outperform others, both the low performers and their managers sometimes begin to assume that these performance variations are natural, unchangeable, and the result of an innate characteristic of the superstars. Nothing could be farther from the truth. One of the most effective ways of challenging the performance [...]

One point you must address in setting budget variances report¬ing policy is frequency. Should you report monthly variances only, or year to date? The argument in favor of month variance reporting is that you won’t need to repeat explanation from previous periods. This is true. But year-to-date reporting still makes more sense. Under the monthly [...]

• Budget revisions, if required, are more easily justified and executed. It might seem that, just as you complete the current year’s budget, worksheets archive for the six-month revision. While the policy of midyear revisions should be questioned most critically, many organizations continue to waste time developing detailed budgets that will never be put to [...]