finance

I’m always perplexed and frustrated by the annual budgeting process. The waste I see it creating, even from outside organizations, is incredibly large. People start planning things financially before they have any idea of what to do. People postpone things that they shouldn’t because it’s not yet in the budget,

I recently gave a short interview on lean finance. It was more of an introductory conversation that spontaneously turned into an interview. It was a handful of questions. You can see the interview with Business Finance here.

Everyone wants a good return on investment. It’s no way to run a business, as many lean thought leaders have written about. But whether calculated or just a mental impression, we want a high return on investment, or ROI. But why does everyone only focus on the R? When I

Show me the money! Or at least, show me your plans to have money in the future. One of the most pervasive intrusions to sound strategic decision making and long-term leadership is a focus on quarterly earnings. “We must hit the number” drowns out more sensible criteria such as “what

Private equity and lean don’t often go together. Private equity has been blamed for a lot of evils and problems, as this Boston.com cartoon lampoons: But when they do, there are some great synergies. We have worked with many private equity firms, and private equity-held companies. The biggest synergy is

Over the past 18 months, a great deal of attention has been placed on the banks, the providing of capital to those banks, and the health and wealth of Wall Street. Banks have started to pay back their “loans” and have started demonstrating the ability to profit. But was this