OE-1.2 Planning & Decision Making

Work through these

• Nature and purpose of planning; the planning process

  The first of the management functions, and the one the next four items unpack. Planning is deciding in advance, which sounds obvious until you see how much of an organisation runs without it.

• Types of plans; policies and their types

  Plans come in kinds, from one-off projects to standing rules. Policies are the standing kind, and knowing that they are plans rather than laws changes how you argue with one.

• Environmental scanning: SWOT and PEST analysis

  Two structured ways of looking outward before deciding. The value is in the habit of writing all four or five boxes down, because the one you leave empty is usually the one that hurts.

• Objectives and Management by Objectives (MBO)

  Goals stated so that you can tell whether you reached them, and a whole management approach built on that idea. It is where planning stops being aspiration and becomes measurable.

• Types of strategies and the strategic planning process

  How the plan gets from an idea to a route, at the level of the whole firm. This is the item that connects the analysis above to a decision someone actually takes.

• The TOWS matrix

  A way of turning the four boxes of the earlier analysis into actual options by pairing them. It is a small technique and it is what stops the analysis being a list nobody uses.

• Planning tools and techniques; plant location and layout

  The concrete end of planning, down to where a factory sits and how its floor is arranged. Physical layout is a planning problem, which is not obvious until you see the cost of getting it wrong.

• Decision making: types of decision and the decision-making process

  How a decision actually gets made, and the kinds of decision that recur. Programmed against non-programmed is the distinction worth carrying, because it tells you what can be delegated.