Radical Democratization of Financial Intelligence, Tom Root Pt 02

Learn how to give your team the information they need to truly become engaged and empowered in this part 2 of 4 with Tom Root. He’s Managing Partner, Zingmerman’s Mail Order and continuous improvement leader and creator of a business maker space called Maker Works in Ann Arbor, MI. 

I completely ripped this off of the Zingerman’s website. They created it and deserve full credit.

If you believe we can create meaningful work and make workplaces that are inspiring, then please join the community. 

Music is “LA All Night,” GG Riggs, Courtesy of Shutterstock

https://www.zingermans.com/

Notes taken during the editing of the show:

Give them the financial intelligence to make better decisions.

Democratization comes into play because they want someone responsible for the reporting and management of a metric.

Ownership means three things:

Report the past

Forecast (Active Leadership) Not telling the future, but a preferred financial future. Activities will have to happen, therefore:

Deliver – The action steps needed to accomplish the preferred future.

Annual Planning Process

everyone is involved and include

At the top is the Vision 2-5 years

Goals and Action Steps – 1 year goal in

Action Steps – these must happen to achieve the Goal

This

Financial Documents

Define the scorecard and metrics for success

Annual bonuses

What kind of help do people get? Accountants are available as resources. They can go speak to the SMEs they need. 

3 Departments. 3 people own the line Net revenue. They will work together to figure it out.

Because you submit it to the whole group, they get constant feedback.

28:38 Annual Planning Process

everyone is involved and include

At the top is the Vision 2-5 years

Goals and Action Steps – 1 year goal in

Action Steps – these must happen to achieve the Goal

This

Financial Documents

Define the scorecard and metrics for success

Annual bonuses

Universally, these are the same for all the businesses.

Who participates and process

Entire staff gets together and discuss:

What they liked best for the past year.

What they wish will be different for next year.

Look at list and leadership team tries to aggregate into a draft one of the vision. 

Share with the staff.

Comeback

What are we going to do this year to achieve that vision?

Always going back to the staff.

Annual planning process – Calendar window is a 3 month window April through June (August 1)

The approach each business takes is somewhat different. 

Mail order – Lean. 3 week long sprints

5 days vision generation – draft

5 days – “ADD” – Proforma and financials

5 days – “CUT” – Proforma and pairing down to get to the profit number they want.

They’re down to 2 days for each one. There’s work outside of the time.