Читать книгу The Financial Controller and CFO's Toolkit - Parmenter David - Страница 9

When Henry Ford said “You can have any color you like as long as it is black,” the world of commerce was a simpler place. The Ford company only had to work out its production capacity in a year and it could then estimate sales, having backed out the expected movement in inventory.

Large production runs, lengthy month-end processes, were the order of the day. Charles Horngren's “Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis” and books like it were locked into detail and a view into costing, budgeting, and allocation of overheads that is directly opposed to the lean movement.

When I was studying commerce at Liverpool University I was taught well to deliver services that Ford might have needed when building the model T Ford. The accounting profession has learned many bad habits:

Maybe It Is Time for Therapy

Two hundred years ago, when the Napoleonic Wars were raging, the English Navy had a device for retribution. It was called the cat o' nine tails. The English Navy stopped using this multi-tailed whip a long, long time ago, so why do so many accountants pick up the cat o' nine tails and whip themselves time and time again?

If it is not the cat o' nine tails, it is shooting ourselves in the foot. This book is about stopping this self-inflicted punishment and changing our ways.

Escaping the Catch-22

Joseph Heller's iconic 1961 book, Catch 22,2 introduced a new term to popular culture. The Oxford English Dictionary defined “Catch 22” as “a situation or predicament characterized by absurdity or senselessness.”

I see many finance teams in this situation. The slow month-end reporting, the never ending annual planning process, and the long, drawn-out annual reporting cycle are both beautifully summed up by the above Catch 22 definition. How do we get out of this Catch 22? The finance team needs to create time for change, to have more time to act. Where do we find this time? We find it by aiming for these lean finance team benchmarks: