Budgets? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Budgets: Ten Things We Think We Think We Know about Budgeting and Performance

Learning is the only sure way to achieve ongoing performance improvement. Budgeting and learning are fundamentally orthogonal processes. Budgeting stabilizes, which is a good thing in itself, and promotes economy, but it discourages understanding of variation. Learning requires perturbation and measurement. Given the processes through which service accomplishment and operational excellence are realized, it is unlikely that budgeting, as generally practiced in government, can promote continuous improvement in enterprise performance.