54. Why marketers need to look beyond budgeting

The traditional approach to budgeting is broken. Worse. Budgeting builds dysfunction into business and into your marketing department. There is a better way.

This week, we meet Dr Steve Morlidge, thinker, speaker, author of The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting and chair of the European Beyond Budgeting Round table.

Traditional marketing budgeting limits a marketer’s ability to adapt to rapid market changes. This inflexibility, combined with a focus on short-term targets, can lead to inefficient spending—where budgets are used up to secure future funds rather than drive meaningful growth.

The conventional process also discourages innovation by penalising risk-taking, essential for breaking new ground in marketing strategies.

• Discover Flexible Budgeting Approaches: Learn how to move beyond the traditional, restrictive budgeting models to embrace more dynamic and adaptive financial planning strategies that align with fast-changing market conditions.
• Enhance Innovation and Risk-Taking: Gain insights into how shifting away from a rigid budgetary focus can encourage innovation and risk-taking in marketing strategies, leading to greater creative freedom and potential breakthroughs in the market.
• Optimise Resource Allocation: Understand methods to avoid wasteful spending and optimise marketing budgets, ensuring that resources are used efficiently to maximize impact and ROI in your campaigns.

Steve has many answers... this epsiode might just hold the key to your future success?

About Steve Morlidge

Steve Morlidge has 30 years of practical experience in designing and running performance management systems in Unilever, including three years as the lead of a global change project. He is a former chairman of the European Beyond Budgeting Round Table and now works as a management thinker, writer and speaker, drawing on his years of experience at the leading edge of performance management thought and practice. 

Steve Morlidge published Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting, John Wiley, 2010, ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting’, ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting’, ‘Present Sense’ in 2017, 2018 and 2020 respectively. ‘Zen and the Art of Organising Work: The Hidden Anatomy of Effective Organisations…Using Systems Thinking to Unlock Nature’s Secrets’ was published in April 2021 and 2023 saw the publication of ‘Cost Matters’ and most recently he helped author ‘The Viable Map Workbook’ which sets out a practical methodology to help people put the principles of Beyond Budgeting to work in organisations. 

He is on the editorial board of Foresight, a forecasting practitioner’s journal published by the International Institute of Forecasting to which he regularly contributes. He is also a cofounder of CatchBull, a supplier of forecasting performance management software and sits on the advisory board of the Beyond Budgeting Institute. 

Steve completed his BA at Durham University and is a qualified management accountant (CIMA). He has a PhD from Hull Business School studying the application of systems concepts to the design of complex organizations and is a visiting fellow at Cranfield University and visiting Professor at BPP University. 

Outside work Steve has three children and is currently a proud grandfather times three. But he has never been able to sustain interest in anything long enough to call it a hobby which he likes to think is a sign of a restless enquiring mind…although his wife has a different interpretation. 

Links 

Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk  

LinkedIn: Dr Steve Morlidge |