What Is a Job Creation Program?

Planning is the most basic and important function of all management functions, and it is closely related to the other four functions. This is because planning involves both the goals of selected organizations and departments and the identification of ways to achieve them. Responsible for the goals set by the plan, the executives are engaged in activities such as organization, staffing, guidance and leadership, and control to achieve the intended goals. In order for the various activities in the organization to proceed rhythmically, there must be a rigorous and unified plan. Planning is important in terms of improving the economic efficiency of the organization.

Planning work

There are broad and narrow plans.

1. Broadly defined: three closely related work processes: making a plan, executing a plan, and checking the implementation of a plan.

2. Narrow sense: It is to formulate a plan, that is, to scientifically predict based on actual conditions, weigh objective needs and subjective possibilities, propose goals to be achieved in a certain period in the future, and ways to achieve goals.

significance

The significance of planning work is 1. To compensate for uncertainties and changes. 2. Facilitate managers to focus on goals. 3. Facilitate faster, more accurate, and more economical management. 4. Conducive to control.

There are broad and narrow plans. Broad planning work refers to the three closely linked work processes of making plans, implementing plans, and checking the implementation of plans. The narrow planning work refers to making plans, that is, according to actual conditions, through scientific prediction, weighing objective needs and subjective possibilities, proposing goals to be achieved in a certain period in the future, and ways to achieve goals. It is an orderly guarantee of the various activities in the organization. Planning is also a process that requires the use of wisdom and creativity. It requires visionary development of goals and strategies, rigorous planning and deployment, and decision-making based on repeated trade-offs.

In order to do a good job of planning and enable the prepared plan to be successfully implemented, the planning function, like other management functions, must be implemented in accordance with basic principles, methods and techniques. Practice shows that many mistakes in planning work are caused by a lack of understanding of these basic things.

The first step in planning is to determine the goals, which is the basis of planning.

The definition of goal: the end point to which the organization and individual activities point or the final result sought within a certain period of time.

The nature of the goal:

(1) Hierarchical system: Individual goals must be based on departmental goals, and departmental goals should be consistent with the overall goals of the board of directors.

(2) Multiplicity: The determination of a goal depends on profit, efficiency, growth,

The task of planning is to determine the goals of the organization in a certain period of time according to the needs of the society and the organization's own capabilities; through the preparation, implementation and inspection of the plan, coordinate and reasonably arrange all aspects of the organization's business and management activities, Effectively utilize the organization's human, material and financial resources to achieve the best economic and social benefits.

The tasks and contents of the planned work can be summarized into six aspects in brief, namely: What to do it? Why to do it? When to doit Where to do it? Who to dolt? And how to dt? Referred to as "5w1H". The specific meanings of these six aspects are as follows:

What to do : It is necessary to clarify the specific tasks and requirements of the planned work, and the mental tasks and work priorities of each period. For example, the tasks of an enterprise's production plan are mainly to determine which products are produced and how much to produce, to reasonably arrange the quantity and progress of product inputs and outputs, and to ensure that the ordering contract is completed on time, in terms of quality and quantity, so that production capacity is as full as possible Use.

The nature of the planning work can be summarized into five main aspects, namely, purpose, priority, universality, efficiency and innovation.

According to different standards, plans can be divided into different types.

The procedures of any planning work, that is, the working steps are similar, and include the following in order: assessing opportunities; setting goals; determining the prerequisites for planning work; drawing up alternatives; evaluating various alternatives; selecting plans; formulating Support plans; digitize plans through budgets.

(1) Estimating opportunities. The estimation of opportunities should be carried out before the actual planning work begins. Although it is not a part of the planning, it is a real starting point for the planning work.

Its contents include: a preliminary analysis of possible future changes and opportunities that are foreshadowed, forming a judgment to find out where they are based on their strengths and weaknesses; understanding their ability to take advantage of opportunities; giving rise to major uncertainties, and analyzing their occurrence The possibility and degree of influence; on the basis of repeated considerations, make up your mind to make your strengths and avoid your weaknesses.

(2) Determine goals. The first step in the planning work is to determine the goals of the planning work for the group and its subordinate units on the basis of measuring opportunities. At this step, the basic principles and goals to be achieved should be explained. The tasks of formulating strategies, policies, rules, procedures, plans and budgets should be pointed out.

(3) Determine the prerequisites. The second step of the planning work is to determine some key pre-planning conditions and make the designer reach consensus. The prerequisites for the so-called planning work are the assumptions of the planner, in other words, the expected environment when the plan is implemented. The more the person in charge of planning knows the planning premise more thoroughly and can use it consistently, the planning will also be coordinated.

According to the internal and external environment of the organization, the prerequisites of the planned work can be divided into external prerequisites and internal prerequisites; according to the degree of control, the prerequisites of the planned work can be divided into three types: uncontrollable, controllable and controllable. Prerequisites. The aforementioned external prerequisites are mostly uncontrollable and externally controllable, while the internal prerequisites are mostly controllable. The more uncontrollable prerequisites, the greater the uncertainty, the more it is necessary to determine the probability of its occurrence and the degree of impact through forecasting work, which will be explained in detail in Chapter 7 of this book.

(4) Formulate alternative plans. The third step in the planning exercise is to investigate and envisage alternative action options. Often, the most obvious solution is not necessarily the best solution. A slight modification and deduction in the past plans will not lead to the best solution. This step needs to be creative. In addition, the plan is not as many as possible. Even if we can use mathematical methods and use of electronic computers, we still have to limit the number of candidate solutions in order to focus our efforts on the analysis of the few most promising solutions.

(5) Evaluate various options. The fourth step of the planning work is to weigh various factors according to the premise and goals, compare the advantages and disadvantages of each plan, and evaluate each plan. Evaluation is essentially a value judgment. It depends on the criteria adopted by the evaluator on the one hand and the weights given by the evaluators on the other hand. Obviously, the quality of the work to determine the goals and determine the prerequisites of the plan directly affects the evaluation of the plan. In terms of evaluation methods, the more mature array evaluation method, analytic hierarchy process, and multi-objective evaluation method can be adopted when conditions permit.

(6) Choose a plan. The fifth step in planning is to choose a plan. This is a key step made on the basis of the first four steps, and it is also the substantive phase of decision-making. It may be the case that sometimes it is found that there are two desirable solutions at the same time. In this case, we must determine which plan to take first, and refine and refine the other plan as a backup plan.

(7) Drawing up a derivation plan. A derived plan is a sub-plan under the master plan. The master plan is guaranteed by the birth plan, which is the basis of the master plan.

(8) Preparation of budget. The final step in planning is to convert the plan into a budget and digitize it. A budget is essentially a plan for allocating resources. The budget work is done well, and it can become a tool for summarizing and comprehensively balancing various plans, and it can also become an important criterion for measuring the progress of the plan. This latter point will be discussed in detail in the sixth part of this book.

Principles "generally refer to basic laws that have universal significance in a field, department, or science." According to this, the management principle is a theoretical encapsulation of the basic laws of the management process, making it a concept to guide daily management work. The application of the principle should be combined with the actual situation of the time and place. As a basic management function activity, planning work has its own rules and naturally should have its own principles. The main principles of the planning work are: the limiting factor principle, the promise principle, the flexibility principle, and the channel change principle.

First, the limiting factor principle.

The so-called limiting factors refer to the factors that hinder the achievement of the organization's goals, that is, if other factors remain unchanged, simply changing these factors can affect the degree of achievement of the organization's goals. The principle of limiting factors can be expressed as follows: The more able the supervisor is to understand the factors that are the main constraints on achieving the goal, the more effectively and efficiently he can formulate various action plans. The limiting factor principle is also known as the "cask principle". The meaning is how much water the wooden bucket can hold, depending on the shortest piece of wood on the barrel wall. The principle of limiting factors shows that when making plans, supervisors must fully find out the main limiting factors or strategic factors that affect the achievement of the goals of the plan, and take effective measures in a targeted manner. Comrade Mao Zedong used philosophical language to explain the same truth in The Contradiction. He pointed out: "If there is a majority of contradictions in any process, one of them must be the main one, which plays the role of leadership decision, and the other is in the secondary and obedient position. Therefore, if any process is studied, the result exists If there are more than two contradictory complex processes, we must use all our strength to find out its main contradiction.

After catching this main contradiction, all problems were solved.

Second, the promise principle.

There should be some rules to follow in choosing a reasonable period in the planning work. The principle of promise can be expressed as: Any plan is a promise made to complete various tasks. Therefore, the greater the promise, the longer it takes to realize the promise, and the smaller the possibility of fulfilling the promise. This principle involves the issue of planning duration. In general, economic considerations affect the choice of plan duration. Since planning work and the forecasting work that underlies it are costly, the planning period should not be limited too long if it is not economically feasible. Of course, there are risks to short-term planning, so how to set a reasonable planning period? The problem of determining the reasonable planning period is reflected in the "promise of promise", that is, to determine a future period for reasonable calculation work, the length of this period depends on the time necessary to achieve the promised tasks in the decision. For example, due to the unexpected sharp increase in raw material prices, an enterprise needs to formulate a plan to increase sales revenue in order to ensure the profit target of the annual production and operation plan. So how long will this plan last? What time does this plan have to be formulated and implemented at least to ensure its realization? According to the principle of promise, the plan period mainly depends on the shortest period from increasing the order to the final realization of sales revenue. For the company, it usually takes two months from receiving the order, signing the contract, and completing the engineering drawing design. The production cycle of production preparation, production and production is generally two months. Commodities are shipped by rail. The duration of each shipment process is about half a month. The settlement cycle is generally more than one month, and it is gradually increasing. Therefore, the planning period should be set at half a year, that is, the starting time of planning work should be at least before the end of June. This is why the company reviews its annual plan completion by the end of June every year. This work has become a practice.

According to the principle of promise, the plan must have a deadline. In fact, in most cases, completing the deadline is often the strictest requirement for the plan. In addition, the schedule must be reasonably determined and the schedule should not be shortened at will. The promise of each plan cannot be too much, because the more promises, the longer the plan. If the executive takes longer than he can foresee the future correctly, and if he cannot get enough resources to make the plan flexible enough, he should categorically reduce the promise, or The period he promised was shortened.

For example, if he promised an investment, he should take measures such as accelerating depreciation to shorten the payback period of the investment to reduce risk.

Third, the principle of flexibility.

The plan must be flexible, that is, when there is an unexpected situation, the ability to change direction without too much cost. The principle of flexibility can be expressed as: the greater the flexibility reflected in the plan, the greater the risk of loss due to unanticipated events. The smaller. It must be pointed out that the principle of flexibility is that there should be room for planning. As for implementation, there should generally be no flexibility. For example, the execution of a production plan must be strict and accurate; otherwise, the assembly shop will stop and wait for materials or a large backlog of work in progress will occur.

For executives, the principle of flexibility is the most important principle in planning work. When the burden of the task is assumed and the target planning period is long, flexibility shows its role. Of course, there are certain limits to flexibility, and its restrictions are:

(1) It is not always possible to delay the decision to ensure the flexibility of the plan. Because the future certainty is difficult to fully predict, if we just wait to collect more information, try our best to consider the possible problems in the future, and when we are constantly determined, we will miss the opportunity and cause failure.

(2) There is a price to pay for the flexibility of the plan, and even the benefits derived from it cannot compensate for its expenses, which is not consistent with the efficiency of the plan.

(3) In some cases, it is often impossible to make the plan flexible. That is to say, the flexibility of a derived plan may lead to changes in the overall plan or even the risk of failure. For example, the sales plan encountered difficulties in the implementation process, and may not achieve the set goals. If flexible disposal is allowed, it may jeopardize the profit plan for the whole year, which will affect many aspects such as new product development plans, technological transformation plans, supply plans, salary growth plans, financial revenue and expenditure plans, etc., causing the industry executives to repeatedly weigh After that, everything had to be mobilized to ensure the success of the sales plan.

In order to ensure the flexibility of the plan itself, we should do our best when making the plan without leaving a gap but leave room for it. Flexible plans are also called "flexible plans," which are plans that can adapt to change.

Fourth, the channel change principle.

After the plan is formulated, planners must manage the plan and promote its implementation without being "managed" by the plan and cannot be framed by the plan. If necessary, it can be checked and revised according to the actual situation at that time.

Because the situation may change at any time in the future, the plan cannot be fixed.

Although when planning a plan, we foresee what may happen in the future and formulate corresponding contingency measures, but as mentioned earlier, it is impossible to cover everything; secondly, the situation is constantly changing; thirdly, the plan often fails to keep up with the changes. There are some issues that are impossible to foresee, so check the plan regularly. If the situation has changed, it is necessary to adjust the plan or redefine the plan, just like an airliner, you must always check the route, and once you encounter obstacles, you can detour. Therefore, changing the course can be expressed as: the overall goal of the plan remains unchanged, but the process of achieving the goal (ie the course) can be changed at any time due to changes in circumstances. This principle is different from the principle of flexibility. The principle of flexibility is to make the plan adaptive, and the principle of changing the course is to make the plan execution process adaptable. To this end, the plan author must constantly check the plan, readjust and revise the plan. To achieve the desired goal