Silo budgeting and how to get people working together
It’s the time of year for many businesses to draw up their budgets for next year. And if your business is like most, each department prepares this in relative isolation from each other. Which is pretty dumb if you think about it.
Customers don’t think in terms of departments. They evaluate your service in terms of the expectations you set and the experience they have. How well this all works out is determined by everything you say and do across the business. So if you carve up resources by department without a coherent strategy to manage their experineces, you’re unlikley to make much of an impression. Which leaves you vulnerable to competitors who do.
Luckily, not many firms are good at formulating strategy which leaves those that do, a gaping opportunity to grow at the expense of those that don’t. So how should you go about it?
- Understand how you can make a material difference to customers. Find out where your proposition stands relative to other alternates they have available
- Run a workshop to discuss the findings and work out where to focus and what you need to do. Draw up realistic goals and timeframes.
- Split into working groups to work out how to find customers and how to improve their experience. Draw up revenue projections, draft budgets and split by department
- Come together to discuss and agree the final plan and budgets required
- Repeat as often as required
The number 1 concern of CEO’s is how to get their people to work together. But if plans are formulated in silos, then its not surprising that they behave like that too. So if you want next year to be more fruitful, get rid of silo planning and start working on helping customers.
Follow