Business Planing

Most of us are fairly familiar with the meaning of planning in our everyday life. We do often decide in advance about the things to be done on a busy working day. Parents make advance decisions on the education of their children. As students, you may think in advance how to go ahead with the preparation for your examination? How to make use of your time in the best possible manner and so on? Laymen understand planning as some systematic way of deciding about and doing things in a purposeful manner.

However, in the context of formal organisations and their management, the concept of planning has a specific connotation. It means deciding in advance what is to be done in the future for a specific period and then taking the necessary steps to do the things decided upon. It means looking ahead into the future and trying to anticipate what is it likely to be, how will it affect the organisation, what direction the organisation should take, and how to cope with the future events? Planning also implies determination of courses of action from among alternatives to achieve the goals of the organisation, both in the immediate future and in the long run. The very notion of planning brings to mind such images as neat, orderly and disciplined approach to work, goal-oriented behaviour, thinking about and arranging things in advance, careful allocation of scarce resources, and so on. In short, planning may be defined as the process of setting future objectives and deciding on the ways and means of achieving them.