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

In an action plan the focus is on specific, concrete, intended actions. The plans emphasize what will be done, when and by whom. The plan has a minimal focus on concepts, needs, and the rationale for the objectives and actions. Actions are described in detail and the actions are measurable. Once a firm's strategic direction has been set, then knowledge of a situation should be used by the leader/manager/planner to propose and choose actions and initiatives.

Featured Planning Tip

According to Rumelt (1979), "Rivalrous environments reward the exploitation of asymmetry and the exploitation of asymmetry, in turn, leads to the formation of niches and specialization as a means of adapting to niches. ...

The assumption of rivalry, therefore, allows the use of a powerful rejection rule in evaluating strategy: a strategy that does not either create or exploit an asymmetry constituting an advantage must be rejected (p. 203)."

Asymmetry refers to an "imbalance of resources between competing or adversarial sides in an economic or political contest, where the 'weaker' side takes unexpected advantage of nimbleness, agility, and leverage of new technology or globalization. The term can refer to military struggles (counter-terrorism), or to business (individual entrepreneurs competing with bureaucratic, regulated companies.)"