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"Decision Making and the Planning Process"

Decision making is the cornerstone of planning. Several years ago, Procter & Gamble (P&G) set a goal of doubling its revenues over a ten-year period. The firm's top managers could have adopted an array of alternative options, including increasing revenues by only 25percent or increasing revenues threefold. The time frame for the projected revenue growth could also have been somewhat shorter or longer than the ten-year period that was actually specified. Alternatively, the goal could have included diversifying into new markets, cutting costs, or buying competing businesses. Thus P&G's exact mix of goals and plans for growth rate and time frame reflected choices from among a variety of alternatives. More recently, IBM announced its plan to achieve earnings per share of $20 (up from $11.52 in 2010) by 2015. The company also plans to reach $100 billion in cash flow and return 70 percent to shareholders by that same year.2 This goal, while different from P&G's in several ways, nevertheless reflects the same mix of decisions regarding area, level, and time frame. Clearly, then, decision making is the catalyst that drives the planning process. An organization's goals follow from decisions made by various managers. Likewise, deciding on the best plan for achieving particular goals also reflects a decision to adopt one course of action as opposed to others. We discuss decision making per se in Chapter 9. Our focus here is on the planning process itself. As we discuss goal setting and planning, however, keep in mind that decision making underlies every aspect of setting goals and formulating plans.3 The planning process itself can best be thought of as a generic activity. All organizations engage in planning activities, but no two organizations plan in exactly the same fash ion. Figure 7.1 is a general representation of the planning process that many organizations attempt to follow. But, although most firms follow this general framework, each also has its own nuances and variations.

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