While planning my summer reading lineup, I came across a review of Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons’s new book, The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us (Crown, 2010).

The book details two forms of temporary visual impairment – “change blindness” and “inattentional blindness” – that really capture a couple of the shortcomings of the traditional budgeting process. more

Finance executives and managers suffer the same problem that all of us with Internet connections constantly grapple with in our personal and work lives: information overload.

There are so many easy ways to get metrics that we often gorge ourselves on numbers, yet remained hungry for actionable information. Metrics mean nothing unless there’s some understanding as to what the underlying cause and effect are.

Gaining that understanding during planning and forecasting activities feels like a “Eureka!” moment. more

Well, rolling forecasts have “officially” arrived as a management tool!

Last Friday’s “Dilbert” comic strip takes a crack at the move to rolling forecasts presented by Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss. ###

I’m happy to report that in recent weeks, I’ve been asked by more than one business writer to share my insights on the changing landscape of corporate budgeting, forecasting, and planning.

It seems that business magazine editors sense that some of the recession-driven changes to traditional planning approaches (e.g., moving to rolling forecasts, implementing scenario planning, and even ditching the budget in some cases) may be here to stay.

In case you missed these articles or have yet to see them (one of them will be published by APQC shortly), here are some highlights of these trend discussions. more

As we move into summer, change has been on my mind.

Sitting on my desk is a copy of the Harvard Business Review’s June issue, the cover of which promotes a series of articles titled “Managing Change: How to Do It, When to Do It.”

I found great value in the article “Change for Change’s Sake,” which begins on page 71. The article compares companies to the human body. The piece then examines how managers can identify and eliminate buildups of “corporate cholesterol,” which are “human dynamics that limit communication, creativity, and efficient resource allocation.”

(I suspect you know what comparison I’m about to make here: The human dynamics that the traditional budgeting process causes certainly qualify as corporate cholesterol.)

Sitting on my bedside table is a copy of Switch, the best-selling business book by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. This happens to be the current selection in The Player Group’s monthly book club. Our staff is reading and discussing the book to gain insights into how well we manage change, how we might manage change more effectively, and how we might help our clients and members address their own planning-related change challenges. more