The most important factor in expanding current business or setting up a new one is proper planning. But what is planning? Planning can be defined in simple words as a process of what, when, where and how to do. For any organization the planning structure normally contains the following elements
- Team building, modeling and consensus.
- Evaluate what they have achieved with previous plan and the resources they have had.
- Analyze their business, economic, political and social environment.
- Anticipating & evaluating the impact of the future developments.
- Build the vision and goals that are needed to be achieved and the actions that should be taken to achieve the goal.
Thus we see that planning is a process that contains implementation methods and planning procedures. In general there are 4 stages of planning and implementation.
First Stage
It is the analysis stage in which both internal and external environmental factors of an organization are analyzed and evaluated.
Second Stage
This stage is known as Set Stage. Here we identify and establish the mission, vision and goal & evaluate the financial records, i.e. evaluate available resources.
Third Stage
This stage is also known as development stage. At this stage existing organizational plans and objectives along with tactics and operational programs are considered for a new planned development.
Fourth Stage
Also known as implementation stage, here methods and controls are defined which subsequently implement the plan.
So the whole planning procedure can be formulated in following steps
- Analyze the organization environment.
- Analyze environment development.
- Evaluate available resources.
- Estimate planning models.
- Set a mission objective and goals.
- Consider an organization’s existing plan.
- Develop the alternative plan.
- Develop the implementation procedure.
- Implement your plan.
Now let us classify types of plan. Based on organizational level plans can be classified in three levels.
- Strategic level.
- Tactic Level.
- Operational Level.
Strategic Level
It is the level where objectives and goals that would be fulfilled by implementing our plan are decided. The strategies for various levels of implementation of our plan i.e. in which level which strategy or plan is going to be used. These strategies are decided by the topmost management level of the organization. Let us take the example of a college where they have to start new courses. The Board of directors represents the topmost management level of any college. All major planning strategies are decided by the board. They decide what to do and transfer how to do to the bottom level.
Tactic Level
Tactics are decided by the middle level management. Emphasis is laid over project management and market competition. Continuing with above example once the board decides what to do it’s up to the middle level management, i.e. Principle to decide how to do. Principle decides how many teachers to recruit, the payment to give and goes forward with it, whether the current infrastructure is sufficient or anything new is needed.
Operational Level
It is the level where actual plan is brought into implementation. Once the college decides and recruits the teachers it’s now up to the teacher to commence the course.
So the strategic level decides what to do, at tactic level it is decided how to do and it is dine at operational level.