Video Transcript: The Planning Function

This is the planning function business management for every enterprise. So the  planning function includes all the activities that lead to the definition of objectives and the determination of appropriate courses of action to achieve those  objectives. Planning involves defining the organization's goals, establishing an  overall strategy for achieving those goals, and developing plans for  organizational work activities. It's concerned with both ends what needs to be  done, and means that is how it's to be done. They determine resource  allocation, which is a distribution, as we've covered earlier, timetables and other  necessary actions to accomplish the goal. Now, planning is the beginning of  process management. As an intellectual process, we have to think before we  act. Decision making is the integral part of planning. We've got to make sure that we're making the right decisions for the organization. Continuous process  always improving, continuing to become more efficient and more effective over  time, we've got to be flexible, nimble in our operations, being able to move with  market conditions. All pervasive function applicable across the different levels of  management. So as the management sets the goals and the objectives, middle  management carries them out through the implementation of those strategies to  lower level organizational managers. So planning minimizes risk and uncertainty in business. In any market, there's always risk and always uncertainty, so we've  got to plan accordingly to mitigate those risks, reduce them and eliminate them,  if possible. Planning leads to success because we have developed a plan, we  have implemented it. Now we're going to facilitate the plan through  organizational operations, facilitates control, measuring our outcomes, seeing  the data, interpreting the data, making adjustments, being able to control the  variables of our operation and then planning trains all levels of management.  Continued education is so critical in the planning function of management. So  we need to set the scope of clear time to complete the objectives, a quarter a  year, a five year plan, a 10 year plan. We need to ensure that we are always  working on the time frame. This includes having detailed goals and objectives  concerning the quality our primary markets, the rollout of new products, having  ongoing meaning and application for the organization. We need to always be  defining who we are, how we're innovating. How are we going to get better what  we do? How are we going to be the market leader? Let's talk about the types of  planning. Number one, strategic planning is a comprehensive, long term and it's  relatively general. It's a broad plan, a broad scope. This is where we want to be  in 10 years throughout the growth process. Focus on broad, enduring issues for  ensuring a firm's effectiveness over a long period of time. So we want to set  goals, five years, 10 years, 20 years out. And strategic planning states the  organization's mission and may describe a set of goals to move a company into  the future, operational planning focused short term and specific. What are we  doing right now to make the business more efficient, more effective? It translates the broad concepts of the strategic planning to clear numbers strategic steps 

and measurable objectives for the short term requires efficient, cost, effective  application of resources to solving problems and meeting objectives, tactical  planning. Tactical planning falls between strategic and operational planning. It's  what we do on the ground to make sure that we are following the guidelines that have been set forth by upper management to ensure that we're positioning,  positioning ourselves in the market to deliver quality results to our consumers.  More specific than strategic planning, these are the details the fine print, this is  what we're doing on a day to day basis to ensure that we are the best in  industry. Deal with more issues of efficiency other than long term effectiveness.