Planning Valuable Time Is Lost

Planning

Valuable time is lost in planning. Substantial savings can be realized if corporations would cut down on planning and concentrate on implementing." Do you agree or disagree with this view? Provide reasoning for your view.

What if?' This is the most dreaded question for any corporate executive or employee. 'What if' implies uncertainty and doubt, and things not going according to plan. However, uncertainty is also inherent in the nature of the modern, capitalist condition of modern life. Mitigating this uncertainty is the goal of many business initiatives. The use of planning in an effective fashion allows workers to consider the possibilities of future actions based on complex relationships. Accountants attempt to ask 'what if' these new corporate tax codes are implemented. Management asks 'what if' there is a reshuffling of the executive board. Budgeting departments ask 'what if' the international branch newly opened in Asia fails. Advertising asks 'what if' there is a downturn in the market and a loss of interesting a luxury product. A IT professional when for instance, designing a new data warehouse considers a variety of potential 'what if' scenarios to render a system protected from hackers. (Kaelin, 2004) Rush through planning into the implementation phase, and one may find one's self running with no purpose -- indeed, running off a cliff rather than where one desires to go.

Of course the best laid plans of management, mice, and men often go to waste, as events such as terrorist attacks and national disasters can completely reconfigure the economic world one faces. One cannot anticipate every possible bad -- or good -- scenario. Yet as cataclysmic as 9/11 proved, the recession that followed did not come from one cause -- planning and examination provided earlier hints of a slow down. One could argue that the overconfidence that the market could only go up during the heady days of the 90's tech boom, and the refusal to consider other possibilities not only contributed to 9/11's impact but sowed the seeds for recession just as much as the unexpected. Thus planning is still key, and planning if done efficiently can still be part of a speedy implementing strategy. One must always first look at what's important to a company and decide where the company needs to go. A company must identify business needs before deciding what the practices will be to satisfy those needs, and develop and implement an effective active plan only after considering what might go wrong and right in the future. (Lockwood, 1999)