Recently, as we were helping a client design and implement their balanced scorecard, they asked us for helping in aligning their budget to their strategy. The thinking was that if they were going to take the time and effort to implement a strategy management system across a large organization, they wanted to ensure they were funding strategic initiatives.

They explained their budget as "cost-plus," meaning that each year the finances are divided up the same way as the previous year, with any additional dollars added on top of that and that no unit's budget varied by more than +/- 5%. In this budget environment and as they were beginning their budget cycle, the client wanted to know what they could do to make their budget process more strategic.