The irreversible half of the plan

For years I treated the budget as the plan, and I had it wrong.

It is the natural mistake, because the budget is the half with a document. Lines, owners, a total, a slot in the calendar, and somebody whose job it is to present it. It looks exactly like a decision.

It is also the most reversible thing in the plan. A media line nobody has signed yet can be cut on a Thursday afternoon by a person who has never met whoever wrote it, in a message of one sentence, and nobody in the building will call that a change of strategy. The number moves and the plan is still introduced as the plan.

Then look at what stops being reversible once this month is over. The hire, who has a notice period, a start date, and a salary that runs from it. The twelve-month contract with a rate and a termination clause. The lease. The stock ordered for the season, which is going to exist whether or not anyone wants it. The promotion licensed in Saudi Arabia, whose dates, mechanic and price are written down, displayed and inspected, and cannot be deepened in November because a competitor moved.

Each of those settles more about next year than any line in the budget, and almost none of them reaches the table dressed as strategy. They arrive as a requisition, a renewal, a purchase order, a form to be countersigned.

So the strategy is the half of the plan that cannot be taken back, and the last quiet month before the season is the cheapest time there is to argue about it.

The spending argument can wait. It is going to be reopened anyway, twice, by people who were not in the room.