Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
What happens is that as companies get bigger and bigger and people's jobs get more specialized within the organization, their information horizon gets tighter and tighter. Eventually it gets to the point all they see or care about is what happens in their cubicle. They find a way to save a half of a percent on the cost of their piece of the business and flip it over the wall with nary a thought on how it impacts the rest of the business or the customers.
[...]
It has happened before and it will happen again; megacorps never learn.
|
First, beancounters are, IMO, managers in charge of budgets. Either they prepare budgets or they audit people to ensure they stick to them. Most are accountants but many are MBA's. Some are both.
FJTorres is right about most employees in major organizations-but one of the advantages a 'beancounter' has is a broader view. Not that they can't get narrowly focused & the worst is lack of focus on customers. But most beancounters, because they're dealing with budgets, deal with broader aspects of the organization. (This is particularly true of those who prepare the budgets. An auditor may audit only R&D, for example, but the person preparing the R&D budget needs to see how that budget fits into the total budget for the organization.)
If the beancounter doesn't understand how the work of those he's auditing (or whose budget he's preparing) affects the organization, that's when he fails. (Or she. Intending to generalize, not be sexist.) And when the beancounters fail that's when the organization usually fails.