The importance of formal planning in organizations has grown dramatically. Until the
mid-1900s, most planning was unstructured and fragmented, and formal planning was restricted to a few large corporations. Although management pioneers such as Alfred Sloan of General Motors instituted formal planning processes, planning became a widespread management function only during the last few decades (Bateman and Snell, 2009). Planning is a process of making a decision and the steps that are taken to implement it.
Traditionally, companies have utilized the basic planning functions to develop plans to achieve a goal. The basic planning function consist of a situational analysis which process planners are used, within a time and resource constraints, to gather, interpret, and summarizes all information relevant to the planning issue under consideration (Bateman and Snell, 2009).
Managers would use the findings from the situational analysis to generate alternative goals and plans that maybe used in the future. Each alternative goal and plan would be evaluated; prioritizing the better goals and paying close attention to the cost of any initiated plan and the investment return on it. Tying plans to a firm’s financials is a key element of success (Bateman and Snell, 2009). The managers will then select the most appropriate and feasible goal and plan.
The next step would be the implementation of the plan. Managers and employees must understand the plan, have the resources to implement it, and be motivated to do so (Bateman and Snell, 2009). Once implementation has occurred then monitoring and controlling will begin. This step is essential; without this process you would not know whether your plan is succ ...