Planning for valve

In a business organization having an organizational hierarchy, said business organization employing budgets for allocating money to specified expenditures and projects, a method of obtaining increased value and utility from the budgeting process comprising:

• performing strategic planning to identify value-adding and manageable organizational targets, and selecting ones of said value-adding and manageable organizational targets to define a set of selected strategically planned targets;
• after said strategic planning and selecting steps, communicating said selected strategically planned targets downward within said organizational hierarchy to a plurality of hierarchical managerial levels;
• after said strategic planning and selecting steps, distributing budget forms to budget-creating managers within said business organization, said budget forms including a plurality of expenditure categories and placeholders for said budget-creating managers to fill in with budgetary numbers;
• said budget-creating managers referencing said selected strategically planned targets and providing budgetary numbers to populate said placeholders within said budget according to said selected strategically planned targets;
• flowing said populated budgets upward within said organizational hierarchy;
• and
• measuring performance of said organization in accordance with said selected strategically planned targets;
• wherein said budget-creating managers do not substantially complete said budgets until after high level management has selected a plurality of said strategically planned targets and communicated said selected strategically planned target downward to said budget-creating managers, such that said budgets are substantially driven by said selected strategically planned targets.