Steve Morlidge - Böcker

The recent crisis in the financial markets has exposed serious flaws in management methods. The failure to anticipate and deal with the consequences of the unfolding collapse has starkly illustrated what many leaders and managers in business have known for years; in most organizations, the process of forecasting is badly broken. For that reason, forecasting business performance tops the list of concerns for CFO's across the globe. It is time to rethink the way businesses organize and run forecasting processes and how they use the insights that they provide to navigate through these turbulent times. This book synthesizes and structures findings from a range of disciplines and over 60 years of the authors combined practical experience. This is presented in the form of a set of simple strategies that any organization can use to master the process of forecasting. The key message of this book is that while no mortal can predict the future, you can take the steps to be ready for it. ’Good enough’ forecasts, wise preparation and the capability to take timely action, will help your organization to create its own future.Written in an engaging and thought provoking style, Future Ready leads the reader to answers to questions such as: What makes a good forecast?What period should a forecast cover?How frequently should it be updated?What information should it contain?What is the best way to produce a forecast?How can you avoid gaming and other forms of data manipulation?How should a forecast be used?How do you ensure that your forecast is reliable?How accurate does it need to be?How should you deal with risk and uncertaintyWhat is the best way to organize a forecast process?Do you need multiple forecasts?What changes should be made to other performance management processes to facilitate good forecasting?Future Ready is an invaluable guide for practicing managers and a source of insight and inspiration to leaders looking for better ways of doing things and to students of the science and craft of management.Praise for Future Ready"Will make a difference to the way you think about forecasting going forward"—Howard Green, Group Controller Unilever PLC"Great analogies and stories are combined with rock solid theory in a language that even the most reading-averse manager will love from page one"—Bjarte Bogsnes, Vice President Performance Management Development at StatoilHydro"A timely addition to the growing research on management planning and  performance measurement."—Dr. Charles T. Horngren, Edmund G. Littlefield Professor of Accounting Emeritus Stanford University and author of many standard texts including Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, Introduction to Management Accounting, and Financial Accounting"In the area of Forecasting, it is the best book in the market."—Fritz Roemer. Leader of Enterprise Performance Executive Advisory Program, the Hackett Group

We live in times of unprecedented turbulence and uncertainty and we are losing faith in our ability to organise ourselves to deal with it. The traditional ‘top down’ functional hierarchy doesn’t feel as secure as it once did, and new generations of workers demand something more than the kind of life and career it is capable of offering.But when we look for an alternative we are faced with a miasma of competing claims for different organising principles. Do we need to be purpose led or profit driven? Fixed or flexible? More centralised or decentralised? Hierarchical or networked? Agile or structured?This situation is perilous. It is also unnatural - in a very fundamental sense - because it demonstrates that we have failed to learn nature’s tricks about how to survive and grow, in any kind of environment, no matter how turbulent and unpredictable.The remedy prescribed in this book is not a choice between ‘this’ or ‘that’, it is about balance. Or more specifically maintaining a set of balances that continuously shift to tame the complexity faced, and created by organisations. Balance begets calm and poise. Calm and poise begets clarity of thought, decisiveness and agility.This book paints a picture of the balances organisations need to strike to survive and thrive. It describes how they work. It helps readers to describe and make sense of the mess and muddle of organisational life. And it helps to design healthy workplaces and diagnose and cure diseased ones.It can do this because the book is not a manifesto of hope and wishful thinking. It brings together decades of esoteric knowledge about systems and how they work in a form that is both accessible and practical. To a curious reader it is the key to a world of ideas that have largely remained hidden. For a management practitioner it provides a new perspective on familiar problems and a platform for action. And it helps a leader to see what is and what could be.