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The Art of Planning in Corporate Management: Why do Managers need to Plan?
Brief Introduction
Corporate planning is a common practice in the modern business environment. Whether new in
the market or leading an industry, every firm requires organizational planning to achieve the set
goals. Meanwhile, companies widely adopt corporate planning to design a course of action to
enhance brand identity, gain exposure, boost profits, or grow and develop. It is a tool applied by
several successful corporations to leverage their available resources to remain highly
competitive. Besides, businesses plan for various reasons, including allocating responsibilities,
guiding and motivating staff, coordinating activities, promoting efficiency, and reinforcing
effective decision-making. Before initiating a plan, a company should consider several factors,
including information gathering, plan objectives, and strategies to achieve goals. Therefore, it is
crucial to consider several topics, including resource management, stakeholder management,
market research, risk management, financial management, and change management, as they
highly influence planning in corporate governance.
Objectives
The initial objective of this report is to help managers understand why they need to plan.
Primarily, managers are responsible for several organizational units, staff and themselves.
Corporate environments are also filled with uncertainties that can harm organizational growth
and development. Meanwhile, managers are expected to achieve particular objectives; hence,
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they must remain focused all the time. That way, they develop a systematic and coordinated
blueprint for future practices. Overall, managers must be equipped to succeed, and planning is
critical to advancing over time. Secondly, this report aims to address some of the topics that have
been covered in class, trying to understand how they impact planning and management.
Managers know they need to plan, but they must understand the areas or factors that help them
develop highly efficient plans. In this context, managers must focus on change management,
financial management, risk management, and market research. Stakeholder management and
resource management are also crucial areas of focus by managers.
Covered Subjects:
Resource Management
In planning, managers must coordinate the available resources. The process involves acquiring,
distributing, and coordinating resources, such as personnel, natural resources, machinery,
materials, technologies, and capital necessary to complete a particular project. Resource
management guarantees that external and internal resources are applied efficiently to budget and
on time. Meanwhile, the first phase of resource management is identifying resources necessary to
accomplish a particular project (Shariatmadari et al. 40). It is also imperative to ascertain when
the required resources will be obtained, mainly via scheduling.
Resource management is highly significant in planning. Research shows that managers
who define resources, their availability, plus plan resource demands accordingly are profoundly
prepared to apply limited resources for maximum results. Secondly, standardization of processes
and procedures prevents wastage of resources and funds used unnecessarily, saving massive
costs to an organization. Thirdly, the best resource management techniques include scheduling,
aggregation, and allocation. Through allocation, managers determine the resources necessary to
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accomplish a particular project, avoiding unnecessary surplus or shortage. Aggregation helps
managers keep track of how they use resources on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. Finally,
scheduling applies to computing resources necessary to finish the underlying work. Scheduling
also helps managers determine the right time to get specific resources as the project advances.
Stakeholder Management
Stakeholders, such as employees, shareholders, government, and the community, have a
considerable impact on the success of projects and organizations. In this regard, stakeholder
management is profoundly critical in planning. The process encompasses managers sustaining
excellent associations with people or parties who significantly affect their work. Primarily,
managers must never forget that they cannot survive independently. The success of the
organizations depends on how well they integrate various parties.
Meanwhile, effective stakeholder management depends on several factors, including the
complexity and size of a project. Some projects will require working with a few stakeholders,
while others seek a vast team of stakeholders. Secondly, it is critical to consider the support
necessary to attain the expected outcomes. For instance, a manager might need physical
resources, expert input, and sponsorship from different stakeholders. Thirdly, a manager must
consider the available communication channel before bringing diverse stakeholders together.
Effective interactions with employees, the public, and government officials are necessary to
attain excellent results (De Oliveira and Rabechini Jr. 132). The aim is to guarantee every
stakeholder feels supported and engaged throughout the project completion.
Market Research
Managers also oversee market research, critical to understanding a new project's feasibility. The
most successful firms worldwide are constantly striving to improve. Hence, market research is an
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excellent tool for managers as it helps them interact with potential consumers, collect and
document opinions, discover unique target markets, and make highly informed decisions
(McDaniel Jr. and Gates 15). Besides, projects are meant to serve a particular market and help a
corporation maximize its revenues and profits. Besides gathering valuable information, market
research is critical because it allows managers to target specific customers' wants and needs. It
also promotes forecasts, especially in sales and production. Finally, market research helps
companies gain a competitive advantage by investigating and integrating strategies to stay ahead
of rival firms.
Managers can adopt different market research methods to attain the desired results.
Besides, understanding each technique is imperative as they all play unique roles. First,
companies can pursue market research through surveys. Managers widely adopt them, especially
in the new era of social media and the internet. Surveys are also unique because they are
inexpensive and easy to conduct. Besides, with the help of social media and emails, surveys are
helping companies reach massive populations within a short period. Second, interviews are
perceived as the most insightful market research method. They allow direct interactions with the
target audience. That way, a business enjoys improved empathy for their encounters. Thirdly,
managers can adapt focus groups in market research. However, regardless of the potential to
yield more profound insights about a particular market, focus groups can be profoundly
dangerous due to a possible collection of errors. Finally, the most effective or powerful market
research technique is observation. The method is cheap to conduct, plus it enables the observer to
learn how the target market interacts with particular products and services. A manager must
select a market research tool that helps the organization achieve its intended goals.
Risk Management
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Risks are inevitable in every industry and can severely affect an organization's progress. In this
regard, managers must be equipped to manage risks. The process involves identifying,
evaluating, and controlling threats or hazards to an organization's earnings, capital, and
reputation. Besides, risks facing a firm range from natural disasters and accidents, strategic
management errors, technological problems, legal liabilities, and financial uncertainties (Tupa et
al. 1224). Managers are responsible for helping companies recognize various potential risks.
They also help design interventions to curb their effects.
Meanwhile, risk management structures are designed to identify existing risks, compute
the uncertainties and forecast their impact on a firm. The outcome is a decision between rejecting
or accepting risks. Besides, rejection or acceptance of risks depends on the firm's tolerance
levels. Companies that have established risk management as a continuous and disciplined
process to resolve and identify risks utilize risk management structures to reinforce different risk
mitigation networks, including budgeting, cost control, organization, and planning (Tupa et al.
1224). Consequently, the corporation will not often encounter uncertainties since the main goal
is to promote proactive risk management.
Furthermore, response to risks takes different forms, but first avoidance. It allows a firm
to terminate a specific risk by eliminating its cause. Second, mitigation enables an organization
to reduce the forecasted financial value linked to a particular threat by minimizing the likelihood
of the risk's occurrence. Finally, an organization can adopt risk acceptance to establish
contingencies to curb the effect of a hazard if it occurs.
Change Management
Managers are also responsible for managing organizational change. Meanwhile, change
management encompasses the systematic approach and resources, tools, and knowledge to
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address transition. The process involves adopting and defining corporate technologies,
procedures, structures, and strategies to handle the shift in the business environment and external
conditions (Palmer et al. 8). However, managers must understand that efficient change
management advances beyond technical tasks and projects pursued to implement corporate
transitions. The process also encompasses leading people as critical players in organizational
change. That way, it becomes easy to successfully enact new business plans, products, and
procedures while concurrently reducing negative results.
Successful change management depends on the adoption of various processes. First, the
manager must establish a sense of urgency by examining the market and realizing transitions that
could help the organization attain unique competitive realities. Some factors that ignite a sense of
urgency include new government laws, market changes, new technologies, social trends, and
demographic shifts. Secondly, the manager should develop a guiding coalition. The goal is to
bring together people who can help achieve the change effectively based on leadership,
credibility, expertise, and position. Thirdly, the team should communicate the change to lure
massive support. Next, it is imperative to eliminate barriers to promote action. The following
phases of the change management process include setting short-term goals, sustaining
acceleration to ensure change is well-implemented, and instituting the change by embedding it
into the corporate culture. That way, it can become a part of the organization in the long term.
Conclusion
Managers pursue planning for various reasons, including resource management, stakeholder
management, market research, risk management, financial management, and change
management. They aim to utilize available resources efficiently to attain desired results.
Managers also strive to coordinate different parties for the success of a project and organization.
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Planning allows managers to explore target markets to understand their feasibility for
investment. Risk management is also a massive priority by managers, mainly due to the high
levels of uncertainties in the market. Finally, change is unavoidable by organizations; hence,
effective planning involves the best ways to accommodate transitions as corporations grow and
develop. Managers are a critical asset in corporations; hence, they must be ready to engage with
all practices that influence transformation.
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Works Cited
De Oliveira, Gilberto Francisco, and Roque Rabechini Jr. "Stakeholder management influence
on trust in a project: A quantitative study."AInternational Journal of Project
Management,Avol. 37, no. 1, 2019, pp. 131-144.
McDaniel Jr, Carl, and Roger Gates.AMarketing research. John Wiley & Sons, 2018.
Palmer, Ian, Richard Dunford, and David A. Buchanan.AManaging organizational change: A
multiple perspectives approach. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2017.
Shariatmadari, Mohammad, et al. "Integrated resource management for simultaneous project
selection and scheduling."AComputers & Industrial Engineering,Avol. 109, 2017, pp. 39-
47.
Tupa, Jiri, Jan Simota, and Frantisek Steiner. "Aspects of risk management implementation for
Industry 4.0."AProcedia Manufacturing,Avol. 11, 2017, pp. 1223-1230.
