Welcome to PlanningSkills.COM

This website focuses on a wide variety of topics related to organization and individual planning situations. The primary focus is business planning.

Planning is an anticipatory decision making process that involves situation analysis, forecasting outcomes and events, evaluating alternative courses of action, anticipating consequences and considering implementation issues and contingencies. Planning often begins with asking one or more questions, for example: What if ...? Could we ...? Do we ...? Is it possible...? How should we respond ...? How can we ...? Is it feasible to ...?

In general, planning is a proactive process that is intended to help individuals, groups and organizations achieve performance objectives.

Featured Glossary Term

A strategic thrust is a broad statement of intended strategic actions. The statement should provide a "compelling theme that knits together otherwise independent activities and focuses the energies of functional groups on things that matter in the market." A strategic thrust is intended to create a broad, shared understanding of what strategic actions are intended during a 3 to 5 years planning horizon.

Featured Planning Tip

Making plans in a narrow, isolated context is a sure path to disaster. "Big picture" thinking is the ideal. It is difficult however to know if one has taken into account all of the relevant factors in a planning situation, but that should be the planner's goal.

Plans for business functions like marketing and finance cannot be developed in isolation from each other. Rather managers and planners need to reach beyond their comfort zone and get out of any planning "ruts" that constrain their thinking.

In general, understanding the "big picture" leads to "big plans". Most really interesting planning situations are complex, multi-causal, and "wicked". Such situations demand that planners get the "big picture".

Developing a "bird's-eye-view" of a situation is always a helpful first step. It is also a step that will provide direction for subsequent planning. Before begining any detailed planning, it is important to ask the following three questions:

1. What do you know about the situation?
2. What do you need to find out about the situation?
3. Why is this planning task important?