One of the most exciting parts of my work is seeing innovative companies in action. My top five most innovative management teams would have to include energy company Statoil, and their finance organization is certainly one of the key drivers of innovation within the company.

Statoil has not only eliminated budgets but it is in the process of doing away with calendars. more

Last week I was out for an early morning walk. I often leave before dark to get in a few miles before the tasks of the day call. This morning the sun had just broken over the horizon. As it rose in the eastern sky it was the perfect angle so that my body cast a really long shadow. Literally it was 300 feet long. As I looked at it I felt extremely fortunate to enjoy that sunrise as well to work with giants in the finance world who cast equally long shadows. They are men who can teach us all so much.

One such giant of a man was my friend, my colleague, my mentor Jeremy Hope. It is with great sadness that I and the other members of the Beyond Budgeting leadership team inform you that the BBRT co-founder, Jeremy Hope, passed away on the evening of 26 September after a relatively short period of severe illness. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife and family at this time.

Jeremy was the catalyst that started this column. more

To continue our discussion of Rick Maurer’s cycle of change (see Figure 1 to my August 15, 2011 blog entry), I have a question for you. Do you ever find yourself stuck on getting started?

I often find this to be a common problem with change. Do you ever find yourself perpetually starting a diet (but never quite actually on it yet)? Is there a major clean out (of email, files, or long overdue to do’s) that you always need to tackle but never seem to find the time? Is there a critical project that keeps getting pushed back? more

Last week I was in Palo Alto visiting Professor Charles Horngren to congratulate him on the 50th anniversary of the publishing of his epic textbook Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis (14th edition 2011, Prentice Hall: Boston, MA) . It has been the market leader since 1962. What is the secret to this book’s success? Let’s see what we can learn from Dr. Horngren.

One of the benefits of working with Dr. Horngren (who serves as the academic advisor to our Beyond Budgeting Round Table) is you get some insights into how he works. One way Dr. Horngren keeps his text alive is to always be learning. When I first invited him to participate in Best Practice research we were conducting on activity-based costing, I was only hoping that he would make time to provide some feedback on our summary report. Instead he joined us for five of the six site visits (the one he missed was due to a scheduled test he was giving that day but he took a red eye flight to be with us the following morning for the next site visit). more

In last week’s blog, I introduced Rick Maurer’s Cycle of Change discussing how change begins with “seeing the challenge.” To move forward, I will share some of my best practices in getting started on a change initiative.

The first begins when you are selecting projects to respond to the challenges you have identified. These often take the form of implementing an improvement approach that may be in vogue. The potential impact of these efforts is often inflated by authors or software companies that clearly have a vested interest in getting you excited about their approach (and in buying their solutions). Benefit claims can quickly get overly inflated. more