[Mike Maples] spent many years watching people fight to move expenses to other teams, claim revenue for their own team, or even fight against the price of shared corporate services. This “allocation” dynamic is extreme “finance gymnastics” that grows exponentially complex as the business cross-dependencies grow. Ultimately the meaning of P&Ls derived from allocations becomes the undoing of most rational thought in an organization — hiring, investing, marketing and more all become influenced by mythical numbers that few really understand. The real downside of this is that it removes accounting as a tool to make strategic decisions, which is why accounting was invented in the first place!
