Accounting Thinking: Monkeys On Finance

It is said that Bill Onken (Bill Oncken) has invented an interesting theory -- "monkeys on the back".

What he calls "monkey" means "next action".

For example, a leader met a subordinate on the aisle. His subordinates said, "can I have a talk with you? I have a problem.

"So the leader stood on the aisle to listen to him to elaborate on the problems. One stop was half an hour. It delayed the original work, and found that the information you got was only enough to decide to intervene, but it was not enough to make any decision.

Then the leader said, "I don't have time to discuss with you now. Let me think about it. I'll talk to you later.

"

In such a case, the monkey was originally there.

On the back, when you talk about each other, the monkeys' feet are on the backs of two people. When you say you want to think about it again, the monkeys move to your back.

You have taken the role of the subordinate, and the subordinate has become a supervisor. He will run to you at three or five hours and ask you, "how is it going?" if you are not satisfied with your solution, he will force you to do what he should have done.

This is actually a "

The problem.

This is not only between leaders and subordinates, but also between different departments, such as financial and business departments.

For instance,

When making business decisions, such as marketing department wants to do a large sales promotion activity, or R & D department wants to have a new product, the boss is not at ease at this time, find the financial manager, say, "come and help me see", the financial manager can not help, say, "OK."

So things fell on the head of finance, and the monkey jumped from the boss to the financial manager.

However, it is difficult for financial personnel to judge the necessity of a promotional activity, nor to understand the rationality of a new product development.

Because this has exceeded the two basic responsibilities of financial "reflection and supervision".

From the "responsibility attribution", making decisions is a matter of the business department. It is a financial matter to make the decision-making process pparent with the results. If the financial monkey is carrying this monkey on his back, he will feel bad about himself.

Another example is that an enterprise costs a lot of marketing expenses. The boss is very dissatisfied. He calls the finance over and scolds. "How do you control the cost?! hurry to think about how to control the cost!"

This is a typical case of financial backing monkeys.

If the actual sales department does not think about it, how can the financial department take effective measures?

As for budget management, we have repeatedly stressed that "budget is the budget of the business department, not the budget of the financial department".