AN EVALUATION OF THE NATURE AND IMPACT OF PLANNING ON ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE (A CASE STUDY OF DANGOTE GROUP OF COMPANIES)
INTRODUCTION
Planning (also called forethought) is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal. It involves the creation and maintenance of a plan, such as psychological aspects that require conceptual skills. There are even a couple of tests to measure someone’s capability of planning well. As such, planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior.
Also, planning has a specific process and is necessary for multiple occupations (particularly in fields such as management, business, etc.). In each field there are different types of plans that help companies achieve efficiency and effectiveness. An important, albeit often ignored aspect of planning, is the relationship it holds to forecasting. Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future will look like, whereas planning predicts what the future should look like for multiple scenarios. Planning combines forecasting with preparation of scenarios and how to react to them. Planning is one of the most important project management and time management techniques. Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal. If a person does it effectively, he can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal. A plan is like a map. When following a plan, he can always see how much he have progressed towards his project goal and how far he is from his destination.Planning Types: Corporate, Operational, Functional and Proactive Planning!
Corporate Planning:
The term corporate planning denotes planning activities for the entire enterprise.The basic focus of corporate planning is to determine the long-term objectives of the organisation as a whole. And then to generate plans to achieve these objectives taking into mind the likely changes in the external environment (macro level). Corporate planning is generally carried out at the top level of management.“Corporate planning includes the setting of objectives, organising the work, people and systems to enable those objectives to be attained, motivating through the planning process and through the plans, measuring performance and so controlling progress of the plan and developing people through better decision making, clearer objectives, more involvement and awareness of progress.” —David Hussey
Hussey has given a broad definition of corporate planning. It covers various functions of management besides defining planning. Corporate planning is the total planning activities in the organisation and not the total management functions.
“Corporate Planning is the continuous process of making present risk taking decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity; organising systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions, and measuring expectations through organised, systematic feedback.” —Peter Drucker
The corporate planning activities are carrying out at the top level. They are important for the success of the entire organisation. The top management is responsible for the formulation of such plans and is prepared according to the inputs that are given to them either from the environment or the lower levels in the organisational hierarchy. The plans are generally long term and are broad based.
