Donna Zuiderweg-Chapter 12 DB Topic #4
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Chapter 12 DB Topic #4 - Zuiderweg, Donna (Reason #3)
According to Robert Paladino in the excerpt “Why Do Companies Fail to Execute Their Strategies?”, one the four reasons companies fail to execute their business strategies is that they do not link their budgets to strategy” (Noreen, Brewer & Garrison, 2017, p. 535). This is actually a timely passage for me to read right now since we are having a lot of discussion about strategies, goal setting and organizational dashboards. Our struggle is that the Zoo is a nonprofit, missioned-based organization that also has many characteristics of a for-profit. Our ultimate goal is to conserve and protect animals but we can only do that with money primarily generated through a healthy, destination-based experience. There is a constant “no money – no mission” aspect that drives us to focus strongly on the financial bottom line determined by guest visits, membership sales, retail per capita spending and all the other non-sexy things that create revenue.
During budgeting, we find ourselves planning money for things that improve the destination experience and questioning expenditures pertaining to sustainability, research and conservation that are mission based but do not drive revenue and are harder to determine impact and ROI. This doesn’t sit well with some of our leadership and most of our team members who are passionate about their work because of the animals. We’ve recently evaluated our strategy document and synthesized it to three priorities with desired outcomes. Now is the task of determining how we will determine progress towards those goals and how to incorporate them into the 2019 budgeting process that will begin in August.