18 Jul 2023
Hannah Bink of Scaled Agile Discusses Participatory Budgeting (Part 2)
This is part two of the conversation between Hannah Bink, Senior Director of Digital Marketing and Operations at Scaled Agile and Melissa Reeve of the Agile Marketing Alliance (https://agilemarketingalliance.com/ (https://agilemarketingalliance.com/)). They continue to explore participatory budgeting and Lean portfolio management approaches.
Transcript
Welcome to the Marketing Agility Podcast, where we discuss all things related to the growing field of Agile Marketing. This podcast is co-produced by Frank Days and the Agile Marketing Alliance, so that we can learn, share, and grow together. I'm Melissa Reve, and I'll be your host for today's episode. We have the pleasure of welcoming back Hannah Bink, who is the Senior Director of digital marketing and operations at Scaled Agile. And Hannah shared her wisdom with us on part one of this conversation around participatory budgeting and lean business cases. She has over 15 years experience in B2B marketing, most recently with Scaled Agile, although she has a background in telecommunications and health care sectors. We are so excited to have you back on the show, Hannah.
Hannah Bink
Oh, I'm so excited to be back. Thank you so much.
Melissa
So we left off and we were talking about participatory budgeting. We talked about the history of it, how it was rooted in the public sector. We started to dive into some examples of how you've used it. So if anybody wants to get that background, be sure and go back to episode one or part one. And now let's jump in and talk about what makes participatory budgeting so effective when implementing Agilent Scale.
Hannah Bink
I actually think participatory budgeting works especially well in large organizations where you're trying to scale agile ways of working such as SAFe and need to apply lean principles to long-term investments. It's really where I think participatory budgeting is an absolutely critical tool.
Melissa
Tell me more.
Hannah Bink
So there's a few things that it allows large organizations to do that is frankly very, very difficult, especially when those organizations are trying to implement something like lean portfolio management. It allows you to align your priorities. It allows for empowerment and ownership, transparency. I'll just talk about a few of these. Participatory budgeting ensures that budget allocation actually aligns with business priorities, and it needs the teams and stakeholders involved. SAFe emphasizes the alignment of work with business goals and customer value. And by involving those diverse viewpoints, we talked a little bit about this in part one, those diverse viewpoints in the budgeting process. It enables that there's direct alignment of resources to the highest priority themes, the highest priority initiatives. And this allows decision-making and resources to be just spent better. It also gives people just a sense of ownership. When employees have a voice in budget allocation, they feel a greater sense of responsibility.
Hannah Bink
They feel more ownership over what comes out of it. And ultimately, that leads to better motivation, better engagement, and honestly, better outcomes. It gives them a chance to see how decisions are made and understand the logic behind them. And then it also feeds into this iterative adaptive approach that is critical to Agile at scale, which is built on iterative and adaptable practices. I think of iterations or sprints, continuous feedback loops. Participatory budgeting aligns with this iterative approach because it allows you to adjust budget all...
