Skills Library

Planning and Budgeting

• Aligns goals with team members and communicates the plan to stakeholders 

• Meets with stakeholders regularly to inform of budget spend and keep track of progress 

• Allocates fixed expenses toward predetermined areas of need and keeps flexible expenses for unanticipated needs

On-the-job challenges

• What’s the big picture? Before requesting budget amounts for 15 projects, have a conversation with your stakeholders about the team’s primary goals. What are you all trying to achieve in the long-run? This should be the first and foremost question to ask. 

  • Try this: Meet with stakeholders to brainstorm and establish three to five primary goals for the year. Write it out during the meeting. Then, ask your stakeholders, “How can the annual budget achieve those goals?” Do not ask for X amount just because “we’ve always asked for that amount” or “it sounds about right.” Are there reasons to adjust the amount from previous years because our goals have changed? 

• Continuously review the budget with your team. Don’t go into a wild “spend it or lose it” mode at the end of budgeting season. If you’ve only looked at your budgeting once (when you planned it at the beginning of the budgeting season), you’re losing out on your ROI. 

  • Try this: Set a recurring biweekly or monthly calendar invite with key stakeholders of the team’s budget. Use this time to keep track of your team’s budget spend on a shareable document, such as google sheets. Share this document with stakeholders. By listing things out and updating it on a regular basis, you can easily work with your team to make changes when necessary. 

• Be transparent with your budget plan. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to indicate real spending.

  • Try this:  Do not pad your budget. While the extra money can provide comfort as a safety net to cover unexpected costs, it can cause confusion. Sticking with a non-inflated budget proposal can educate your team on what’s actually happening and make informed decisions. Padding the budget can also cause the budget approval committee to cut budgets in the following year.

Resources for more inspiration

Articles

• The Balance Careers: Budget Management Tips for New Managers by Dan McCarthy

• CIO: 6 Tips for Managing Your Project Budget by Moira Alexander 

• Harvard Business School Online: 6 Budgeting Tips for Managers by Matt Gavin

BOOKS

• Financial Intelligence (A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean) by Karen Berman 

• Corporate Finance for Dummies by Michael Taillard

• HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers by Harvard Business Review

PODCASTS

• McKinsey & Company’s Inside the Strategy Room: Budget Planning for 2021 (37m 50s)

• Coaching for Leaders: How to Approach Corporate Budgeting with Jody Wodrich (39m 43s)

Videos

• YouTube: How to Create a Project Budget by Jennifer Bridges (3m 5s)

• YouTube: How to Prepare an Annual Budget for a Company by Justin Hogg (12m 10s)

• YouTube: How to Write a Winning Project Proposal (that gets your project funded) (7m 49s)