As consultants, we once helped a manufacturing plant director discover how we could save $20 million from his costs in the coming year. His response? “I don’t want $20 million. I only need $3 million to meet my objectives. Why would I contribute more than that?” The director contended that delivering the full improvement would hurt him in two ways. First, it would make it seem as though he had “sandbagged” his budget. If there was $20 million of cost saving available, why had he only offered to produce $3 million? Second, were he to deliver the full improvement that year he would be giving up $17 million “for free” that could otherwise be reserved for achieving future years’ budget commitments.