Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about management innovation, exploring and embracing new and better ways of leading and managing. For almost 30 years, I have helped organizations all over the world get started on a Beyond Budgeting journey, alongside my Finance and HR roles in Borealis and Statoil/Equinor. I'm forever thankful for the great opportunities these companies have given me. I have now said goodbye to my corporate life for Bogsnes Advisory, hoping to help even more organizations radically improve their management practices. I'm Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable (BBRT), a popular international business speaker and Beyond Budgeting coach, and winner of a Harvard Business Review/McKinsey Management Innovation Award. 


I wrote

This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations

By Bjarte Bogsnes,

Book cover of This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations

What is my book about?

This is Beyond Budgeting – A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations demonstrates how to take the principles of…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them

Bjarte Bogsnes Why did I love this book?

Nobody writes better about management innovation and about the need for radically changing traditional management than Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini.

Humanocracy is loaded with amazing stories and convincing arguments, all written in an elegant and often witty way. The book is highly recommended.

By Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Humanocracy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller

In a world of unrelenting change and unprecedented challenges, we need organizations that are resilient and daring.

Unfortunately, most organizations, overburdened by bureaucracy, are sluggish and timid. In the age of upheaval, top-down power structures and rule-choked management systems are a liability. They crush creativity and stifle initiative. As leaders, employees, investors, and citizens, we deserve better. We need organizations that are bold, entrepreneurial, and as nimble as change itself. Hence this book.

In Humanocracy, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini make a passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. Drawing…


Book cover of Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace

Bjarte Bogsnes Why did I love this book?

“The success story behind the world’s most unsual workplace” was how this amazing book was introduced when published back in 1988. 

Ricardo Semler writes about how he tried to run this Brazilian company after taking over for his father, inspired by what he just had learned from US business schools. The result was a disaster, both for the company and him. Recovering from a burn-out, he realised that the answer lay in doing the very opposite.

Check out the story about an amazing company where people even set their own salaries!

I read this book when I was still a firm believer in traditional managament. It just blew my mind! Maybe that was when my Beyond Budgeting career started?

Book cover of Corporate Rebels: Make work more fun

Bjarte Bogsnes Why did I love this book?

Pim de Morree and Joost Minnarr both left safe and good corporate jobs to explore the world of management innovation.

They toured the world, meeting and learning from great companies and leaders across a variety of industries. The result is a book of wonderful stories and deep insights about what these companies were rebelling against, and what they did instead.

Highly recommended!

By Joost Minnaar, Pim de Morree,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Corporate Rebels as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

8 radical lessons from 100 of the world's most inspiring companies

Today's workplaces are broken. Badly broken. With 85% of employees disengaged, 23% feeling burned out and 37% believing that their job makes no useful contribution to society, work as we know it today is simply not working.

The good news? There is a better way. And it's not just theory. It's already practiced in pioneering organisations around the globe. Drawing on Minnaar and De Morree's visits to 100+ of the world's most progressive organisations, this book gives direct evidence that you can make work enjoyable and rewarding, while boosting…


Book cover of Beyond Budgeting: How Managers Can Break Free from the Annual Performance Trap

Bjarte Bogsnes Why did I love this book?

Jeremy Hope (RIP) and Robin Fraser were two British authors/researchers who, in the late nineties, discovered that a number of companies had ditched traditional budgeting and much more in favour of more adaptive and human management models.

They visited and interviewed these organisations, including the European petrochemicals company Borealis where we kicked out the traditional budget in 1995. The result was this fascinating book, and the international network Beyond Budgeting Roundtable which today is more active than ever.

By Jeremy Hope, Robin Fraser,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Beyond Budgeting as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The traditional annual budgeting process--characterized by fixed targets and performance incentives--is time consuming, overcentralized, and outdated. Worse, it often causes dysfunctional and unethical managerial behavior. Based on an intensive, international study into pioneering companies, Beyond Budgeting offers an alternative, coherent management model that overcomes the limitations of traditional budgeting. Focused around achieving sustained improvement relative to competitors, it provides a guiding framework for managing in the twenty-first century.


Book cover of Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting

Bjarte Bogsnes Why did I love this book?

UK based Steve Morlidge is a veteran in the Beyond Budgeting movement.

Together with US based Steve Player (RIP), they wrote what I would call the greatest book ever on business forecasting. Rooted in Morlidge’s PhD insights and his extensive experience as a Finance professional, this book provides invaluable learnings on how to provide unbiased, trustworthy, and relevant business forecasts.

It also reveals how to get rid of politics and gaming in this critical business process.

By Steve Morlidge, Steve Player,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Future Ready as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The recent crisis in the financial markets has exposed serious flaws in management methods. The failure to anticipate and deal with the consequences of the unfolding collapse has starkly illustrated what many leaders and managers in business have known for years; in most organizations, the process of forecasting is badly broken. For that reason, forecasting business performance tops the list of concerns for CFO's across the globe.

It is time to rethink the way businesses organize and run forecasting processes and how they use the insights that they provide to navigate through these turbulent times. This book synthesizes and structures…


Explore my book 😀

This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations

By Bjarte Bogsnes,

Book cover of This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations

What is my book about?

This is Beyond Budgeting – A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations demonstrates how to take the principles of agile and scale them up to enterprise level, through a comprehensive model that offers a coherent combination of leadership principles and management processes. The book also describes the many benefits that companies can realize by exploring and embracing management innovation as boldly as technology innovation. This book will earn a place in the libraries of managers, executives, board members, and other leaders seeking a better way to lead and manage in new and different realities, with increasing complexity and volatility, and where employees have new and different expectations, way beyond just a paycheck.

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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Mimi Zieman Author Of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives. 

Mimi's book list on women exploring the world and self

What is my book about?

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.


By Mimi Zieman,

Why should I read it?

22 authors picked Tap Dancing on Everest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…


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