What are the fundamental concepts of planning and why is planning important?
Planning basically refers on what has to be done keeping in mind other important points like when it has to be done and how. It is highly beneficial that an organization spends time on planning its activities and resources using sound business concepts. The fundamental concepts of planning include-
• Situation Analysis- This process involves a thorough review of the internal and external factors that facilitates businesses to determine their goals and objectives. Also, such data can be used as an input for SWOT analysis which includes the assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that the organization sustains with.
• Mission, Vision and Value Alignment- Alignment is one of the most critical concepts of business planning. Every organization must have a clear picture of its stated mission and vision. It is also necessary for its owners to have an idea of why the business exists, what services it provides and who its clients are. With these in place and with the help of business planning, goals and objectives are aligned with the mission, vision and values of an organization.
• Clear Goals and Objectives- Clear goals and objectives in business planning ensure that everyone is aware of the various aspects of projects they are involved with and this helps to achieve greater efficiency and uniformity amongst the work groups. In addition, they also provide an indication of the resources that will be necessary for success.
• Focused Strategies- Planning facilitates the development of strategies in a way to best ensure the achievement of the goals and objectives established. They are designed to overcome your weaknesses and threats and build ...
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...in case one of the actual plans doesn’t work out.
Complexity- A good plan cannot be too complicated and difficult to understand by everyone involved with the plan. Everybody needs to have a perfect understanding of what the plan involves and what the expectations are.
Comprehensiveness- A good plan should be comprehensive yet not too detailed. It should find the right balance between covering all the important issues yet not flooding the plan with detail.
Significance- A good plan should include the significant goals and targets that can be easily achieved by the work groups. The goals need to be properly defined in a way that facilitates smooth functioning of the plan.
Completeness- Incomplete plans tend to lead to confusion, miscommunications and targets being missed. Hence, it is necessary that every plan needs to be completely defined in the right way.
The benefits to those organizations that choose to embark on the process of developing a long-range plan are numerous as well as invaluable. Organizations that commit to such planning are able to establish objectives and priorities, make clear their future direction, adapting to both internal and external environmental changes, resolve major issues that impact the organization and obstacles and provide a clear and justifiable rationale for decision making (Bryson & Einsweiler, 1988, p. 3). Ultimately, the public is better
All set ups will have specific ‘Aims and Objectives’ for their respective businesses. Aims are the broad terms
Planning the agenda requires understanding what each members need to accomplish by the end of the meeting. The plan has to be straight forward as possible.
According to Brian Hill, goals and objectives are statements of what you want your small business to accomplish. Goals are usually set first, followed by objectives that help you measure your progress toward those goals. After establishing your goals and objectives, determine the specific actions and steps required to reach them (2018).
“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind” a famous quote about our goal by Seneca. It is a metaphor about the achievement goal and objectives by good planning skills. One has to plan for what one wants to achieve and where one wants to go. One of the most important things is to have good planning, before taking any project the first think you should do is to create project plan. Planning can be defined as preparing a sequence of action to achieve specific goals and objectives. According to Kerzner (2009), “project planning is desirable that the project manager is involved from project conception through execution. It must be systematic, flexible to handle, closely disciplined through reviews and control and capable of accepting multi functional inputs (pg. 412)”. The importance of planning a project is to describe the work so that it will be easily identifiable to the project team member.
Plan: First of all, it is essential to measure the existing system, understand how it is working and in cases of solving problems, identify possible roots of the problem and solutions for it. In this phase it is
Planning proved to be the first big obstacle to learn in the road to efficient
According to the complexities involved in the problem, and methodologies used for solving the problems, planning problems can be categorized into three categories, Tame problems, Wicked problems and Super wicked problems.
However, no matter how professional the planning team, it was difficult to assess the success of an implemented plan. As the mental state of the people is one of the critical intangible factors often neglected both during planning and after implementation, there was a lack of sensibility in traditional planning methods. It would have been most efficient if the people could just directly input in the decision making process rather than from secondary information supplied by research.
The first function of management is planning. Planning is a process that managers use to identify and involve goal setting and decide the best way to achieve the goal.(Bartol 2007) Planning connect the gap between where we do, where we intend to go. It predict the possible things to happen which would not otherwise happen (MSG 2012). There are several steps to the planning process, which are determine the goals of the organisation, evaluate the current position, consider possible future conditions, identify possible alternative actions and choose the best. Planning is the criteria thinking through goals and making decision to achieve the goal of the organisation’s objective, which requires a systematic way. Also objectives focus the managers how to achieve the final result as managers have to predict anything will happen, avoid the problem and fight back to competitors. An example of planning, which is the President Canon Inc Tsuneji Uchida and lead Canon Company become the no.1 in the global business (Canon.Inc 2011). Tsuneji Uchida has to understand what is the company objective and goal. First, make decision to protect the position and the aim of canon, improve the operation more diversity. Second, he creates the new design of camera and new technology, he plan to do these things to maximise profit.
According to Webfinance (2015), situation audit is the process of identifying and evaluating existing internal and external elements that may impact an organization 's ability to achieve its objectives. It helps the company to identify what is good and need to improve also what is lack in the company that needs to change. Walters & Dana (2007) argues that "situation analysis is an objective look at the business environment and its marketing capability" (pp. 36). It involves a SWOT and environmental analysis, competitive analysis and marketing audit.
Critical to the success of any business is having an organized plan to succeed. Many small businesses especially those that are started ad-hoc or almost by accident, are the guiltiest of not taking the time needed to establish clear objectives for their business. Even in large corporations, there may be an overall corporate mission, but it is not easily translated once middle managers seek to merge the corporate mission into their daily activities. Any business, whether a small entrepreneurial start-up or a one of the fortune 500 companies, will benefit from carving out time to establish a well thought out business plan. A critical component in implementing a successful plan is to put in place specific goals and create a plan on how to achieve them. The strategies to consider are business type or industry; competitor factorization; the availability of human resources; timeline and budget considerations are just a few. A strategic plan which incorporates goal setting and a defined map on how these goals will be attained will set in place the groundwork for a successful business.
The planning school of thought is a strategy that emphasizes the need for an organization to ensure that its business strategy is in alignment with the environment that it operates. In other words, an organization’s strategy must ‘fit’ the environment that it chooses
The planning process depends on a formal information system. The external and internal assessments provide a reality base on which to build future plans. The vision or mission identifies the organization's purpose and its desired future state.
As Schermerhorn states in Management planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are the tools needed by managers to accomplish performance goals. It is crucial that managers be able to recognize and act upon problems or opportunities as they arise. Planning is perhaps the cornerstone of the four processes. All good processes were at some point given great detail so as to anticipate possible problems and solutions to those problems. When the Honda Motor Company decided it needed to refine its inventory they didn't just jump at the first idea that was proposed; they first set their objectives and discussed ways to meet those objectives. After giving careful consideration to processes and the streamlining of those processes human error rose as the top need for change. Sounds simple you might respond; in reality it is much more complicated.