Features of Planning

Planning is characterized by the following features:

1. Primary function of management:

Planning is the first function of management. All other functions follow planning. If planning is wrong, organization structures will be faulty, people will carry out wrong plans, motivation and leadership policies will be ineffective and controls will also aim to achieve faulty plans. This will result in huge losses for ht notarization.

2. Adaptive to environment:

Planning is a continuous process. It is done so that organizations can survive in the changing environment. Changes in environment like compertitors ’ policies, consumers’ tastes, economic policies. value system of the society force managers to change their plans and planning is , thus, adaptive to environment.

3. Future oriented:

Planning is looking ahead. It is perspiring organizations to meet future challenges and opportunities. Future being uncertain, managers adopt scientific methods of forecasting. They anticipate future and incorporate changes in their activities to achieve organizational goals effectively.

4. Goal oriented:

Planning will be useless if it does not achieve the desired goal. Planning is, thus, goal oriented. It clearly lays down the goals and ways to achieve them.

5. Pervasive:

Planning is a pervasive function. It is done for all organizations-business and non-business, profitable and non-profitable, small and big. In a business organization, it is done at each leve;top, middle and low.

The nature and scope of planning, however, is different at deferent levels; top managers plan for the organization as a whole, middle level manager’s plan for their departments and lower level managers plan for their operating units.

6. Intellectual Process:

Managers cannot plan unless they analyse the firm’s past, present and future. It is difficult to predict future as it keeps on changing. Managers have to conceptually and analytically excel in making plans that can be implemented. They should have judgment, intuition, foresightedness, imagination etc. to make good plans. Planning, thus, cannot be done in dark. It is and intellectual process.

7. Efficient:

Efficient means cost effective. Time and money are spent on planning to earn gains in future. A trade off is maintained (Comparison between cost and returns) and managers ensure that expected gains are more than the current costs. Efficiency means “the achievement of the ends with the least amount of resources.”

8. Flexible:

Planning relates to future. Future being uncertain, plans will fail to achieve the objectives if unexpected changes take place in future. Managers have to be quick in changing their plans so that future changes do not fails the plans. Planning is, thus, a flexible activity.

9. Planning and decision-making:

Planning involves decision making. Choosing goals our of multiple goals, deciding about ways to achieve them out of a number of alternatives. Deciding about sources from where funds will be raised, deciding about optimum allocation of resources over different goal and departments etc. are some of the choices that managers have to make. Planning continuously involves decision- making. In fact, the process of decision- making starts much before the process of planning.

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