DEFINITIONS AND IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING

Whatever individuals or organizations do, they need to plan. Planning is the basic process by which we select our goals and determine how to achieve them.

If order for managers to design an enabling climate for the effective performance of individuals working together as groups in the organization, they must see to it that purposes and objectives and procedures of attaining them are clearly understood. If group effort is to be effective people must know what they are expected to accomplish. This is the essence of planning.Planning is the most basic of all managerial functions. In defining it Koontz says that planning involves selection from among alternatives future courses of action for the firm as a whole and for every department or section within it.

So when planning managers select organizational objectives and departmental goals and determine ways of achieving them. It thus provides a rational approach to pre-selected objectives.

It will therefore involve:

•    selecting what objectives are to be achieved
•    deciding the actions to be taken assigned these activities
•    deciding who will be responsible for the action to achieve them

Deciding the organizational position to planning can be looked at, therefore, as the process of developing plans. A plan is a blue print or framework used to describe how the organization expects to achieve its goals. Planning then is simply the process of determining which path among several the organization wishes to follow. When you plan you map out a course of action in advance.
Any goal might be approached in several different ways. Planning is the process of determining which is the best way to approach a particular goal.