bean counting
Obsessive financial tracking
Bean counting is obsessive attention to minor financial details or statistics, especially when it comes at the expense of broader concerns.
The term is mildly derisive, suggesting someone focused on pennies while missing dollars: The project failed because management was more interested in bean counting than innovation.
A bean counter is an accountant or anyone overly preoccupied with numbers.
- accountantFinancial records keeper
- number crunchingIntensive calculation work
- spreadsheetTabular data organizer
- ledgerFinancial record book
- double entryAccounting requiring offsetting records
balance sheet · numbers · auditor · penny-pinching · pinching pennies · calculator · budget · expense report · tally · bookkeeping · tax season · frugal · receipts · balance · meticulous · tedious · pencil-pusher · paper pusher
- countingcountdown, tally, tallying, headcount, numeral
- counting activitiestallying, adding up, numbering, enumerating, tabulating
- counting methodstally, tally marks, enumeration, tick marks, hash marks
- greedgreed, avarice, covetousness, cupidity, materialism
- busyworkbusywork, make-work, grunt work, drudgery, tedium
- overthinkingoverthink, ruminate, obsess, brood, dwell
bean countingstrategic thinking
Deliberate long-range planning
visionary leadership · strategic planning · long-term thinking · blue-sky thinking · seeing the forest for the trees
bean countingcreative thinking
Generating original ideas
intuition · imagination · lateral thinking · visionary thinking · gut instinct
bean countingvalue creation
Making things more useful
growth mindset · generosity · risk-taking · extravagance · profligacy
bean, counting, beans, count, counts, counted, counter, counters, countable