Hi Stephen.
I would think that you should just tell them what the budget means to the
organisation, how budgetting is done, when it is done and reviewed, by
whom and with whom, and why it has an important place in an organization.
Isn't that how most organisations initiate new managers?
How you present this topic will, of course, depend on your audience's
current level of understanding. (The current level of resistance to
budgets and budgetting is another thing.) You could do a pre-test maybe to
see where they are and you can set your objectives for the course from
there. Then you would want to get your CFO, or some bean counter from your
external accountants, to deliver the course you've developed. If you're a
finance man, you could very well do it yourself.
You may want to forget the books (don't recall any at the moment, but
there should be a number of these in a business library, if you really
need to source some materials) and just talk to people who do this sort of
thing for a living. Things will move faster. No use reinventing the wheel.
(Unless there was a point to assigning this to you in the first place.)
Wondering -- if these guys are managers, one would presume they're already
familiar with budgets in the first place. (At the least, we all do
household budgets, one way or the other!) So really, what else is there to
do but send every one concerned a memo to attend a meeting, tell them
clearly and crisply at the meeting that (1) the well has run dry and (2)
money requests beyond current budgets will have to wait till the next
budget period. Period.
Looks like the assignment you've been given may even be a waste of money
itself -- an example of the problem it wants to solve. Good luck.
Chuck Gesmundo
Aldersen Institute, Minneapolis
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>