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

Forecasting refers to a process of making a prediction of coming events, results or conditions. Forecasting is a process a person or an organization can use to think about and prepare for the future. Quantitative forecasting methods use historical data. A number of commentators have equated quantitative forecasting to driving a car by only looking in the rearview mirror. "As long as the road is straight or curving in wide arcs, a driver can stay on the road by looking backward. However, if a sharp turn occurs or a bridge is out, the driver will crash." Peter Drucker is quoted as saying "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window."

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.)"