What are the Basics of Planning?
Would you have done some planning for 2008? Now we begin the year one wonders if the planning had been done has been fulfilled or has become a dead letter. The truth is that few years I’ve been wondering and have not found someone to tell me that their planning has become reality … keep trying.
But do not misunderstand me to skip the planning and results in developing a malignant cancer that sooner or later will require chemotherapy. Therefore, as owners, managers and entrepreneurs must be very clear what are the basics of planning and return to them again and again to properly manage.
What are those reasons?
Plan is to turn what they want to achieve in what we do, to turn our goals into steps to achieve them.
To do this we must consider three basic reasons:
1. Future: Plan is to bring our long-term goals to our short-term tasks. It is shaping the future, and identify ways to achieve it, by what we do today. Good planning will end with a long list of things to do and time to complete.
2. Process: What is really important, planning is the process as we discover the road. Planning involves setting goals, explore ways to achieve them, make a plan, and monitor the results systematically. Each and every one of the steps are the process and not one of them is something wrong.
It is customary, after working like donkeys in our planning, to discover that everything we’ve written is useless. (Much more so now with a hostile environment.) If you want some advice, “Do not worry, business plans are always wrong, planning is the process worth it.”
It is reviewing, revising and editing, and reviewing and revising and editing again. Things are always moving and therefore it is today can be obsolete tomorrow. Getting it is absolutely essential for planning.
3. Philosophy: Planning is an attitude and a way of understanding life and business that requires total dedication and constant. Neither the plan ends when you finish writing, does not begin with the first letter. Understand that is inherent in the work of management will help achieve better results.