Bill Canady explains Zero Up isn't about cutting budgets but moving resources from unprofitable areas to profitable ones. A proper Zero Up exercise outputs a concrete amount, like $4 million, redeployed to three specific initiatives with growth targets and assigned owners.
The point here is not to cut. One more thing before we get to the plan, and it's the thing I want to, that I want most to land. The purpose of Zero Up is not to cut, it's to reallocate, to move people, money, and attention out of the parts of the business that do not produce profit and into the parts that do. A Zero Up that only produces a cut number was run by somebody who didn't understand it. And if the output of your exercise is we found $4 million, you got half of it. The output should be $4 million of capacity moved to these 3 specific places expected to produce this specific growth amount owned by these specific people. The redeployment then is a deliverable.
