Budgeting is not an exact science. At best, traditional budgets are an attempt to predict how each dollar will be spent. Public and private organizations use a variety of methods to develop budgets, from complex formulas to the easy take-last-year's-and-add-10%, or even the ever popular, pull-numbers-out-of-the-sky method.
Since the President's Management Agenda was introduced in the United States federal government in 2001, agencies have been moving towards a new budgeting method – performance-based budgeting. This method goes beyond showing how dollars are spent to reflecting what each dollar will accomplish toward fulfilling the agency's mission. It's a new way of looking at the future.
How are government agencies implementing performance-based budgeting? Will this new paradigm affect decision-making and the funding of federal programs? What are the positive and negative implications of this new method of budgeting? Will it increase accountability and improve performance?
On December 8, these key questions will be the focus of our web seminar, "What are the Implications of Performance-based Budgeting?". Brigadier General Roger Searce, U.S. Army (ret.), brings 30 years of operations experience to these issues. He'll share his insights on the challenges and the importance of exploring the implications of integrating budgets and performance.
Performance-based budgeting requires a level of forward-thinking that isn't traditionally demanded of us. Joel Barker, futurist and author of "Paradigm: The Business of Discovering the Future," wraps up this web seminar by sharing his thoughts on a new pattern of thinking about the future, which he calls "cascade thinking." From his research and 25 years of experience, he has developed a process tool, "The Implications Wheel," which organizations can use to quickly explore the cascade of consequences or "what if's" that spill out as the result of any decision. By exploring the possible implications and their long-term positive and negative effects, Joel believes that you can not only anticipate the future but take charge of it..
We will continue to examine performance-based budgeting along with the cascade thinking of the Implications Wheel in our January 27 live webcast. We've invited a panel of experts, including Joel, to comment on the results from participant groups who are using his methodology to identify possible implications of their budget planning.
Denise Madden
Editor
denise.madden@bettermanagement.com
