Bill Canady explains why you need to finish your plan before the budget cycle starts. If you complete it after budgeting begins, your recommendations get locked into existing numbers instead of shaping them. For an October budget cycle, finalize your plan by August.
The date is the part people get wrong. So let me be specific. Give it a completion date that lands before your budget cycle starts. If you wait, it will get baked in. With enough room that it can become the budget rather than inform it. If your budget process kicks off in October, Zero Up needs to be finished in August. And if you are running a 1,000-day clock the way I've laid it out, the Zero Up plan is complete by day 270, which is exactly what we did in that $310 million business. And it was complete by day 270 only because simplification moves were done by day 210.
