What Does "Cooking Your Books" Look Like?

Think More Clearly!

What does "cooking" your books look like?  Sometimes it does not look like "cooking" your books.  Many business models do not believe they are performing acts that would be considered "cooking your books."  First of all, let's talk about why people decide to "cook" their books.  Before we can truly examine the common ways many people "cook" their books and why many do not consider it "cooking" is to learn how we must truly accept why this process occurs.

First of all, the pressure to perform is very high.  We live in interesting times.  The economy is tougher to manage than ever before.  The rules of the business world are ever changing.  The amount of uncontrolled changes that hit the business scene on a regular basis adds unknown pressures to the performance landscapes.  These increasing unknowns compressed by a shrinking economy deliver an atmosphere that breeds creativity for survival.  Survival desires are troubled enough to cause more creativity for reporting what is not going well.  This is where the most common seed of "cooking the books" begins.  The desire to survive and the pressure felt to paint a better picture of where we are headed sets the stage for some new creativity to occur.  Leaders begin their trek to discover interesting ways to report how they plan to recover from their packages of debt, efforts of failed patterns and in many cases...near destruction.  Hence, "cooking the books" procedures begin.          

The decisions to make bookkeeping adjustments that should never be made are driven by the strong dislike to report terribly bad results we have been producing but do not want to reveal.  No leader desires to continue to produce unfavorable economic results.  "Cooking the books" is a natural way to satisfy a strong urge to hide what has been already done wrong.  We do not want to carry anymore responsibility for those terrible business results anymore.  So we kind of develop a logically designed creative plan to adjust how we report what we want to do...rather than reporting the wrong stuff we have been doing.  Truthfully, we talk ourselves into doing wrong things to hide what we have done in order to further improve what we really want to do.  We cheat a little bit.  We arrange for making some bookkeeping adjustments that we can attribute to logical explanations that will help us get rid of our negative pattern of unwanted numbers and results.  We "cook" the books.  We use educated accounting methods and techniques to accomplish this kind of band aid goal.  We "cook" the books.  We get really creative in our accounting techniques.  We strategically shift some bad performing numbers to new areas and place them in balance to those new areas of review so we can pull them away from where they usually would be placed.  We "cook" the books.  We report bad results in new ways.

Again, be reminded why we do this kind of creativity.  We believe we cannot live with the true patterns of previously produced negative results.  We also believe we have a better plan to correct those errors.  This kind of combination drives us to find creative ways to accept the past wrongs.  This whole process seems to give us new permissions to continue on and try directing new and better ways to do the things we do.  This kind of scenario helps provide the justifiable support for creatively hiding what has been done wrong.  We are able to logically justify why the wrongs can be swept under the rug in a creative and acceptable way because we truly believe we have the repair and solutions on the right path for future success.  Therefore, we "cook the books."  What's more, we can strongly justify why this step is very necessary.

In the beginning of this whole process, somewhere deep inside our soul we recognize and begin to deeply believe that we are not able to produce favorable numbers and business results in the same fashion we once did.  We concede fully to this terrible notion.  We have tried so many things in so many ways to make our numbers work well and produce favorable and consistent business results.  Unfortunately, we have failed constantly at that effort.  This "feeling" becomes one of our most damaging patterns that supports how we begin to logically define how we can accept a strategic process for beginning the long effort of creativity for learning how to structurally begin "cooking the books."  We deeply know we are not able to produce favorable and consistent business results in the previous ways of operations.  This main stream of "feeling" dominates how we constantly think about the business model we lead.  We have grown to become at odds with the potential for success this model can currently produce.  We do not believe it can happen until the numbers meet where we want them to reflect.  We believe it is the numbers that are wrong.  We logically climb onto the buss that works its patterns to blame the past and we want to remove how that past continues to kill our future.  This is where the seed of "cooking the books" begins.

Many leaders get to this point and do not fully recognize the future damage they are setting in place.  They are too blinded by the creative logic of repair they have adopted.  They only need to report the past in a more acceptable way in order to be able to convince others how to move onto the future repair they want them to see.  They do not see how they creatively begin the process to "cook the books."  The storm of wrongness begins.  It looks like good weather when it first begins.  It becomes much like the calm before the storm.  Some terrible winds and damaging weather is just around the corner.  Batten down the hatches...here it comes.

Think Closer To Integrity, First!  Not Last!

Add to this 'all-driving' scenario the truth that we live in compromising times.  We permit more wrongs than ever before.  There are no absolutes in full force anymore.  Our tolerance to permit wrong doing has reached an all time high.  We permit our top leadership positions, the Presidency for example, to have inappropriate and illicit sex with office partners...described sex acts with cigars...and do not even consider it wrong anymore.  We tolerate it.  We will even permit that President to lie about the wrong acts and fall right behind him to support his continuing work efforts.  Get real.  This is truly wrong, people.  There is no more simple way to put it.  Wrong is wrong...not justifiable because we fail to perform well, also.  It is wrong.  We live in very compromising times.  The only tough part about this equation of thought is that the laws of compensation do not care much about what we think.  We even think forgiveness is part of how we need to accept wrong stuff.  We get easily confused.

The subject of forgiveness is completely separate from the subject of tolerance for wrong doing.  These are two completely different acts.  I forgive my board of directors for the abuse they delivered during some economic corrective actions we recently employed.  However, I did not tolerate some of the wrong steps they wanted to employ.  As unpopular as it may have been, wrong was still wrong.  Stand up and be counted.  Make sure you are not feeding the desire to act creatively in the wrong ways.  It may seem easier to roll along with the wrongs, but in the end, the crash will eventually occur.  In proper time, the delivery of the worst results will find their way to the painful surface.  We will have to wear and accept them somewhere, at sometime.  The pure laws of compensation will prevail long term.  That is for certain. 

Creative bookkeeping is wrong.  If your model sucks, it sucks.  Go fix it. Quit dancing around the fire to find better ways to burn what you do not like.  Creativity in bookkeeping only spells an increased potential for future disaster.  Refrain from participating where you can.  It is ugly business.  It is not necessary in the world of success.  Begin the work to study and identify where the wrong stuff is being done.  Find out what is causing those wrongs to occur.  Think for awhile.  Think about some of the best options you have to correct what is going wrong.  Work your brain into the direction of determining how you plan to strategically correct what is wrong.  Do this kind of work in full stride by revealing where the deepest wrongs need to be currently reported.  If you are to blame, then place that blame where it truly belongs and get set deeply into a better plan of correction.  Find a better place to perform on the new trail of improved effort.  I cannot tell each of you how many times I have performed wrong in my business career.  It would take too many pages to report all of it.  However, I can promise each of you that with each wrong discovery came a wonderful set of corrective decisions that helped to produce better economic results.  Get completely over yourselves.  Get out of the way of protecting where you failed.  Accept the real fact that all have fallen short.  That includes every reader of this blog.  We all have failed on the trail of our business paths.  The best ones accept this truth, report it accurately and make the next best decisions to repair what was going wrong.  It is that simple.

Refrain from getting so creative as to hide what terrible performances your leadership has permitted.  Wear the fault and move on.  Get more creative in the ideas you develop about how to improve the business you lead.  That is where your best ideas need to surface.  Do not work harder on the creativity for reporting what you did not produce well.  That is the seed of destruction that comes from the logical efforts to creatively develop justifiable ways for "cooking the books."  This is often times the true beginning of the end. Time will only be your next business partner.  In this kind of case, time is not a good partner to own.  The longer it takes, the worst you feel and the worse the 'hit' will hurt.  The shorter it takes, the messier the repair.  Neither one of these friends is a very good friend.

Clean up your business acumen.  Stay away from the creative reporting.  Learn how to accept what you permitted to occur.  Get your mind reset on discovering new ideas.  Start thinking about how good your long term future can produce better, more consistent results.  You are the leader, act like one.

For goodness sakes, do not "cook the books."  It is the kind of creativity that must go away.

Until next time...