Fulfilling the Planning Function

Planning

Planning is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning involves the creation and maintenance of a given organizational operation. This thought process is essential to the refinement of objectives and their integration with other plans. Planning combines forecasting of developments with preparing scenarios for how to react to those developments. An important, albeit often ignored, aspect of planning is the relationship it holds with forecasting. Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future will look like, whereas planning predicts what the future should look like.

Research planning

Planning involves the creation and maintenance of a plan.

Planning is also a management process, concerned with defining goals for a company's future direction and determining the missions and resources to achieve those targets. To meet objectives, managers may develop plans, such as a business plan or a marketing plan. The purpose may be achievement of certain goals or targets. Planning revolves largely around identifying the resources available for a given project and utilizing optimally to achieve best scenario outcomes.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy or direction and making decisions about allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. To determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues through which it can pursue a particular course of action. Generally, strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

• What do we do?
• For whom do we do it?
• How do we excel?

The key components of strategic planning include an understanding of the firm's vision, mission, values, and strategies. (Often a "vision statement" and a "mission statement" may encapsulate the vision and mission. )

1. Vision: This outlines what the organization wants to be or how it wants the world in which it operates to be (an "idealized" view of the world). It is a long-term view and concentrates on the future. It can be emotive and is a source of inspiration. For example, a charity working with the poor might have a vision statement that reads "A World without Poverty."
2. Mission: It defines the fundamental purpose of an organization or an enterprise, succinctly describing why it exists and what it does to achieve its vision. For example, the charity above might have a mission statement as "providing jobs for the homeless and unemployed."
3. Values: These are beliefs that are shared among the stakeholders of an organization. Values drive an organization's culture and priorities and provide a framework in which decisions are made. For example, "knowledge and skills are the keys to success," or "give a man bread and feed him for a day, but teach him to farm and feed him for life." These example values place the priorities of self-sufficiency over shelter.
4. Strategy: Strategy, narrowly defined, means "the art of the general"—a combination of the ends (goals) for which the firm is striving and the means (policies) by which it is seeking to get there. A strategy is sometimes called a roadmap, which is the path chosen to move towards the end vision. The most important part of implementing the strategy is ensuring the company is going in the right direction, which is towards the end vision.

Tools and Approaches

There are many approaches to strategic planning, but typically one of the following is used:

• Situation-Target-Proposal: Situation – Evaluate the current situation and how it came about. Target – Define goals and/or objectives (sometimes called ideal state). Path/Proposal – Map a possible route to the goals/objectives.
• Draw-See-Think-Plan: Draw – What is the ideal image or the desired end state? See – What is today's situation? What is the gap from ideal and why? Think – What specific actions must be taken to close the gap between today's situation and the ideal state? Plan – What resources are required to execute the activities?

Among the most useful tools for strategic planning is a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). The main objective of this tool is to analyze internal strategic factors (strengths and weaknesses attributed to the organization) and external factors beyond control of the organization (such as opportunities and threats).