Why Did Larry Ellison Refuse 200 Budget Slides?

David Senra reads Larry Ellison's refusal to look at a senior manager's 200 budget slides until four basic questions were answered. The account he reads has Ellison seeming to find glaring inefficiency, wastefulness, and intellectual sloppiness whenever Ellison looked inside Oracle. A prime example was the Energy Center of Excellence, meant to showcase Oracle software for the energy industry. Plans called for millions of dollars to run the center. Next year's energy software sales were forecast at $10 million, against $5 million to run the center, and Ellison asked whether anyone else found a forecast of just $10 million in sales beside $5 million for the center strange.

More complexity and poorly thought-out processes kept showing up, so the work had to stay simple. Basic budget information was disturbingly difficult to get. Four questions covered the plan: how much a group sold last year, how much it would sell in the year ahead, how much it spent last year, and how much it would spend in the year ahead. Many hours and multiple meetings went into prying the answers from some senior managers. One senior manager arrived with 200 slides. Four answers came first, and only after the answers would the slides get a look.