The Trojan Horse that leads your Transformation to Agility

About

Did your enterprise agile transformation start with the Finance and HR departments? No? You are not alone. Are they on the roadmap to be next? Maybe they should be…

Agile is a mindset and a habit, using some frameworks and practices. However, it is hard to be agile when we need to provide all the answers at the end of each year for the entire following year or when we report in a waterfall manner. So, the way we do budgeting, forecasting, performance assessment, rewards & recognition, and cost control can be either enabling or hindering agility. 

In this episode, we’ll walk through an example of how we transform the whole organisation by stealth by evolving the Finance and HR departments. By evolving it this way, you achieve the transformation at a fraction of the price of traditional transformation programmes.

Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #6 – Our Agile Tales

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode, we ask why Silicon Valley firms rarely appear in Beyond Budgeting case studies; Bjarte posits that these companies excel at technology innovation but fear management innovation, sometimes reinforced by IPO-focused CFOs, though being public is not a true barrier (Many Beyond Budgeting adopters are listed on Wall Street.) He explains Beyond Budgeting can improve performance in both good and tough times and cites Handelsbanken’s long-term stability. The discussion covers Morningstar’s self-management and the need for enterprise-wide coherence, then Haier’s radical micro-enterprise model and rapid evolution.Finally, Bjarte details Equinor’s (formerly Statoil) beyond budgeting journey since 2005 via “Ambition to Action,” integrating strategy, risk, actions/forecasting, indicators, and HR with a 50/50 split between “what” and “how,” emphasizing transparency, event-driven cadence, decentralized ownership, and holistic performance evaluation.Key topics and timestamps00:00 Welcome01:05 Why Silicon Valley Lags in Management Innovation04:11 Public Markets and Budgets04:53 Boom Bust and Stability06:40 Morningstar and Self Management08:48 Haier Radical Micro Enterprises13:00 Equinor Beyond Budgeting Origins16:32 Ambition to Action Framework20:11 Alignment Cadence and Transparency25:37 Holistic Performance Evaluation28:15 Wrap Up and ConclusionAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.Follow Bjarte at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comVisit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about
  1. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #6
  2. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #5
  3. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #4
  4. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #3
  5. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #2
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