YOUR COMPETITION
earnings budget number will be 20 percent higher than the one they submitted. What a kick in the stomach! Instantly, Sara is enraged for a slew of reasons at once: Headquarters just didn’t listen! All that work for nothing! No one explains anything around here! And worst of all, now there won’t be enough money for all the things we should be doing. The next day, Sara goes back to her people for their meeting after the meeting. Together, they all rail against the injustice and mystery of the corporate edict. And then, without meaning to, Sara makes matters worse. To appease her team, she takes the money from corporate, now much less than they had asked for, and she evenly parcels it out, a bit to manufacturing, a bit to marketing, a bit to sales, and so on. Of course, Sara would be smarter to place her bets on one or two programs, but that rarely happens in these situations. People stuck in the Phony Smile budget game get bitter. Too often, they lose their sense of commitment to the company and forget how excited they were about their original proposals. They just take the money from corporate and spread it like crumbs. My argument here is not with a senior team allocating resources. That’s their job because they have a strong, informed understanding of what each business can realistically deliver. The trouble arises when headquarters is secretive about the process, when they don’t explain the rationale behind their decisions. But like the Negotiated Settlement dynamic, the Phony Smile usually concludes with everyone shrugging off the whole enervating event—it’s just business, right? And the next year, they start it all over again. ■
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