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The Planning Cycle

A planning process for medium-sized projects.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

The Planning Cycle brings together all the aspects of planning a one-off, medium-sized project into a single, coherent process.

For example, let’s say your business is growing so rapidly that you need to relocate to a larger office. Great news. But the job of planning and organizing the move has fallen to you. Maybe not such great news!

You will need to consider whether the move is viable, and think about criteria for suitable premises. You’ll have to factor in costs, timings, and how to minimize business downtime.

So, where do you start? Try the Planning Cycle.

What Is the Planning Cycle?

The Planning Cycle is an eight-step process that you can use to plan any small-to-medium sized project: moving to a new office, developing a new product, or planning a corporate event, for example.

The tool enables you to plan and implement fully considered, well-focused, robust, practical, and cost-effective projects. It also helps you to learn from any mistakes you make, and to feed this knowledge back into your future planning and decision making.

The Planning Cycle offers a framework for projects up to a certain level of complexity. For larger projects that involve many people over a long period of time, you may need to use a more formal approach.

These approaches have similar structures to the Planning Cycle, but they tend to require more documentation, and are often integrated within a wider organizational context. Our article, Project Management Phases and Processes , tells you more about them.

For shorter projects that need a fast turnaround, you should also consider Agile Project Management .

Figure 1: The Planning Cycle

Project Planning Steps

The Planning Cycle has eight steps, as outlined below.

1. Analyze Your Situation

First, clarify what you need to do. An office move, for example, would require you to find the right premises, with appropriate access and parking.

Gather as much information as possible at this stage. This will help you to formulate a more detailed and robust plan further down the line.

Start by examining your current position, and deciding how you can improve it. There are a number of techniques that can help you to do this.

One option is to carry out a SWOT Analysis . This will identify the strengths and weaknesses of your position, and the opportunities and threats that you face.

Another method is Risk Analysis , which will help you to spot potential pitfalls and weaknesses in your organization that may affect your plan, and identify any external risks. You can then use your findings to plan how you will neutralize or mitigate those risks.

For example, ask yourself whether your project is a response to pressure from customers, competitors, or new technology. Or perhaps your company is growing, and you need to make changes as a result. Pressures may arise from changes in the economy, new legislation, people's attitudes, or government.

You can also pick from a whole range of creativity tools to work out where you can make improvements Simplexity Thinking is a particularly powerful tool that helps to foster creativity and solve even the toughest problems.

2. Identify the Aim of Your Plan

When you've completed a realistic analysis of your situation, and the opportunities for change, the next step is to precisely define the aim of your plan. This sharpens your focus, and stops you from wasting effort on irrelevant issues.

Express your aim in one simple sentence, so that it's clear in your mind. If this proves difficult, try asking yourself questions like:

• What do I want the future to look like?
• What benefit do I want to give to our customers?
• What returns do I need?
• What standards do I want to achieve?
• What are my organization's core values?

You can present this aim as a Vision Statement or Mission Statement .

Vision statements express the benefit that an organization will provide to its customers. For example, Nike’s vision is to "Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. (*If you have a body, you are an athlete.)"

Mission statements explain how the vision will be achieved. For example, the mission statement for The Bristol Myers Squibb pharmaceutical company is "To discover, develop, and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases."

3. Explore Your Options

By this stage, you should have a good understanding of your situation and what you want your project to achieve. The next step is to work out how to do it!

At this stage, it's useful to generate as many ideas as possible. Again, creativity tools can help you with this. You may be tempted to grasp at the first idea that comes to mind, but if you spend some time weighing up your options you may come up with less obvious but better solutions. Or you may build on your best ideas by using elements of others.

4. Select the Best Option

When you've explored your ideas, you need to decide which one to pursue. If you have the necessary time and resources, you might decide to do detailed planning, costing, and risk assessment work for each one. But chances are you won't have this luxury.

Instead, use tools like Decision Matrix Analysis and Decision Trees to help you to make the final selection. Use Decision Matrix Analysis to decide between different options when you need to consider a range of different factors. Decision Trees enable you to think through the likely outcomes of following different courses of action.

5. Detailed Planning

With your final decision made, you need to establish the most efficient and effective way to achieve your aim. This determines who will do what, when, where, how, why, and at what cost.

Techniques like Gantt Charts and Critical Path Analysis can be useful when working out priorities, deadlines, and how to allocate resources.

Consider how you will monitor the progress and performance of your plan, too. When robust reporting, quality assurance, and cost controls are in place, you can quickly identify and correct potential deviations from the plan.

A good plan also identifies risks and suggests contingencies. This allows you to respond effectively to setbacks or crises. You should also consider transitional arrangements – how will you keep things going while you implement the plan?

6. Evaluate the Plan and Its Impact

The next stage is to review your plan and decide whether you should implement it. It’s crucial to be objective here – even if you've done a lot of work to reach this stage, it may still not be worth your while to pursue the project.

This can be frustrating, but it's better to reach this conclusion now rather than after you have invested valuable time and resources – and your reputation – in its success. The evaluation stage gives you the opportunity to either investigate better options, or to accept that no plan is needed.

Depending on the circumstances, there are several methods you can use to evaluate your plan.

• Quantitative Pros and Cons is a simple technique that involves listing the plus points in one column and the minus points in another. Each point can be allocated a positive or negative score.
• Use Cost/Benefit Analysis to decide whether the plan makes financial sense. Add up all the costs involved, and compare them with the expected benefits.
• Force Field Analysis gives you a "big picture" view of the factors for and against your plan. This enables you to see where you can make adjustments that will help your plan to succeed.
• A Cash Flow Forecast enables you to ensure that you have sufficient resources for your plan, and to assess whether the project is viable. A good cash flow forecast spreadsheet lets you vary your assumptions and investigate the effects.
• Finally, Six Thinking Hats helps you to get a rounded view of your plan and its implications by asking you to evaluate your plan from six different perspectives: rational, emotional, optimistic, pessimistic, practical, and creative.

If your analysis shows that the plan will not give sufficient benefit, or if the negatives outweigh the positives, return to an earlier stage in the planning cycle to explore other options. Alternatively, you may conclude that the project is impractical and abandon the process altogether.

7. Implement Change

Once you have finalized your proposal, and you're confident that it will deliver, it's time to put it into action.

If you've followed the previous steps closely then your plan should also explain how to implement it! It should also show how you will monitor its progress and execution.

8. Close the Plan and Review

All being well, your project is now complete and it was a huge success! Now it's time to close it down and assess what you've learned. Look back over the planning process and assess it carefully to see what could be improved or refined in the future.

If you'll likely carry out many similar projects, it may be worth developing a standard Post-Implementation Review . This is a list of points to consider during the planning review. It helps to ensure that you don't overlook any important aspects of the process.

The review should address key questions such as: did the project solve the original problem? Could it deliver even bigger benefits? And what lessons did you learn that you can apply to future projects?

The Planning Cycle enables you to make viable, robust plans, and to avoid making costly mistakes. It’s suitable for any small- to medium-sized project, in most business areas. It has eight steps:

1. Analyze your situation.

2. Identify the aim of your plan.

3. Explore your options.

4. Select the best option.

5. Detailed planning.

6: Evaluate your plan and its impact.

7. Implement change.

8. Close the plan.

Follow these steps carefully, and your project stands a good chance of success.

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What is the Business Planning Cycle

Planning is the most influential part of a business. Every business organization must plan their activities on a long term or short-term basis for the proper development of their organization. Lack of planning may create some loss in financial, mechanical, or in human resources management divisions. A developed company has a wing that deals with this type of business planning process and holds highly qualified and skilled workers appointed for this process.

What is business planning

A good business plan is to consider as the base of every business. Proper business planning reflects the company’s overview, and it attracts investors from different sectors. In modern times we get assistance from many online applications for planning for a startup company. Business planning should be easy to understand and have to be done in a systematic order. A graphical representation is the best way to represent planning. A good business plan should include an executive summary, marketing policies, and analysis of budget and financial planning. The business planning cycle is a diagrammatic representation of business planning, which includes eight main steps.

Business Planning Cycle

The planning cycle is a systematic process that includes eight steps. We use this planning cycle to plan any small-to-large-sized projects in action. This cycle helps you to identify your mistakes and teaches you some lessons from your previous error, and these lessons are helpful for feature planning. Project or business planning steps are

• Analyze Your Situation : You must have proper data that helps you to analyze the present situation of your organization. You must start thinking about the current situation and deciding how you can improve it. For better analyzing, you must gather as much data as possible regarding the company. We can follow some methods to analyze data in your company like:
• SWOT Analysis : SWOT ( Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis is a technique for evaluating the four main aspects of the business.
• Risk Analysis : By using this method, you can detect potential traps and defects in your organization that may affect your plan. You can identify the external risk by using this method and can neutralize or mitigate those risks.
• Simplexity Thinking : It is a powerful tool that helps to encourage creativity and helps to solve complicated problems in the organization.
• To fix a Mission or Vision statement to your plan:  After analyzing the current situation of the organization, the next step is to determine an aim for our plans. First, you must fix your Vision and Mission of our organization. The vision statement of an organization means the privilege that an organization will provide to its customers, and the mission statement will explain how we can achieve the vision of your organization.
• Examine your Results or options from previous steps: After completing the first two steps, we get several options to establish our planning. We must go through every record one by one and prepare data regarding the economic and social feasibility of the plan. In this step, you can sort the available data and identify the best plans that suit your organization and help in its development.
• Identify the best plan:  After examining the previous results and options, you need to find the best plan. To find out the best possible outcome, you need to calculate the cost and risk assessment work for each plan. They can use different methods like Decision Matrix Analysis and Decision Trees for the selection process. After selecting the best one, you can move to the next phase of the cycle.
• Detailed planning: You need to identify the most efficient and suitable way to execute our plans. For proper planning, you need to answer many WH questions like who, where, why, what, and when. The detailed planning helps you to identify cost controls and quality assurance of the business are in place. If some deviations occur from the actual plan, you can quickly point out those deviations in the early stage and can solve those issues. If you are working out with priorities and deadlines, the techniques like Critical Path Analysis and Gantt Charts helps to make your work easier.
• Impact of the plan: The next step is to review the impact of the plan and need to decide whether you should execute it. If it shows some negative results at this stage, you can drop this plan and continue with others before investing your funds and valuable time in it. There are different methods to calculate the impact of the plan in different circumstances.
• Quantitative Pros and Cons: By using this method, you can list the pros and cons of your plan in two different columns and allocate positive and negative points for each data accordingly. Then identify the difference between the positive and negative points to find the impact of your plan.
• Cost/Benefit Analysis: In a financial sense, you can compare all expenditures for executing this plan with the expected benefits. 
• Force Field Analysis: This will give you a detailed report about the factors for and against your plan on a large platform.
• Cash Flow Forecast: The cash flow forecast deals with the cash inflow and outflow for an organization. By evaluating this cash flow statement, we can analyze the impact of our plan.
• Execute your plan:   Once you complete all these steps and finalize your decision, then it’s time to execute the plan. Then you can monitor the real-time performance of the plan.
• Stop executing the Plan and Review: After completing the current cycle, you must stop running your plan. Create a review of the execution of your plan and can refer to this data for future planning.

Every organization has its own goals or targets that they should achieve shortly. To attain this goal, they need to plan their daily activities accordingly. The Business Planning Cycle helps them to implement plans in a systematic way to achieve their goal. It helps to identify the threats in the early stages of planning and allow you to modify your plans accordingly for better results. Proper Business Planning Cycle will reduce the risk in investments and attract more people to start their own business.

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What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

How to build an organizational strategy

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What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

Related resources

Unmanaged business goals don’t work. Here’s what does.

How Asana uses work management to effectively manage goals

Beat thrash for good: 4 organizational planning challenges and solutions

How Asana uses work management to streamline project intake processes

17.2 The Planning Process

• Outline the planning and controlling processes.

Planning is a process. Ideally it is future oriented, comprehensive, systematic, integrated, and negotiated. 11 It involves an extensive search for alternatives and analyzes relevant information, is systematic in nature, and is commonly participative. 12 The planning model described in this section breaks the managerial function of planning into several steps, as shown in Exhibit 17.3 . Following this step-by-step procedure helps ensure that organizational planning meets these requirements.

Step 1: Developing an Awareness of the Present State

According to management scholars Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell, the first step in the planning process is awareness. 13 It is at this step that managers build the foundation on which they will develop their plans. This foundation specifies an organization’s current status, pinpoints its commitments, recognizes its strengths and weaknesses, and sets forth a vision of the future. Because the past is instrumental in determining where an organization expects to go in the future, managers at this point must understand their organization and its history. It has been said—“The further you look back, the further you can see ahead.” 14

Step 2: Establishing Outcome Statements

The second step in the planning process consists of deciding “where the organization is headed, or is going to end up.” Ideally, this involves establishing goals. Just as your goal in this course might be to get a certain grade, managers at various levels in an organization’s hierarchy set goals. For example, plans established by a university’s marketing department curriculum committee must fit with and support the plans of the department, which contribute to the goals of the business school, whose plans must, in turn, support the goals of the university. Managers therefore develop an elaborate network of organizational plans, such as that shown in Exhibit 17.4 , to achieve the overall goals of their organization.

Goal vs. Domain Planning

Outcome statements can be constructed around specific goals or framed in terms of moving in a particular direction toward a viable set of outcomes. In goal planning , people set specific goals and then create action statements. 15 For example, freshman Kristin Rude decides that she wants a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry (the goal). She then constructs a four-year academic plan that will help her achieve this goal. Kristin is engaging in goal planning. She first identifies a goal and then develops a course of action to realize her goal.

Another approach to planning is domain/directional planning , in which managers develop a course of action that moves an organization toward one identified domain (and therefore away from other domains). 16 Within the chosen domain may lie a number of acceptable and specific goals. For example, high-school senior Neil Marquardt decides that he wants to major in a business-related discipline in college. During the next four years, he will select a variety of courses from the business school curriculum yet never select a major. After selecting courses based on availability and interest, he earns a sufficient number of credits within this chosen domain that enables him to graduate with a major in marketing. Neil never engaged in goal planning, but in the end he will realize one of many acceptable goals within an accepted domain.

The development of the Post-it® product by the 3M Corporation demonstrates how domain planning works. In the research laboratories at 3M, efforts were being made to develop new forms and strengths of cohesive substances. One result was cohesive material with no known value because of its extremely low cohesive level. A 3M division specialist, Arthur L. Fry, frustrated by page markers falling from his hymn book in church, realized that this material, recently developed by Spencer F. Silver, would stick to paper for long periods and could be removed without destroying the paper. Fry experimented with the material as page markers and note pads—out of this came the highly popular and extremely profitable 3M product Scotch Post-it®. Geoff Nicholson, the driving force behind the Post-it® product, comments that rather than get bogged down in the planning process, innovations must be fast-tracked and decisions made whether to continue or move on early during the product development process. 17

Situations in which managers are likely to engage in domain planning include (1) when there is a recognized need for flexibility, (2) when people cannot agree on goals, (3) when an organization’s external environment is unstable and highly uncertain, and (4) when an organization is starting up or is in a transitional period. In addition, domain planning is likely to prevail at upper levels in an organization, where managers are responsible for dealing with the external environment and when task uncertainty is high. Goal planning (formulating goals compatible with the chosen domain) is likely to prevail in the technical core, where there is less uncertainty.

Hybrid Planning

Occasionally, coupling of domain and goal planning occurs, creating a third approach, called hybrid planning . In this approach, managers begin with the more general domain planning and commit to moving in a particular direction. As time passes, learning occurs, uncertainty is reduced, preferences sharpen, and managers are able to make the transition to goal planning as they identify increasingly specific targets in the selected domain. Movement from domain planning to goal planning occurs as knowledge accumulates, preferences for a particular goal emerge, and action statements are created.

Consequences of Goal, Domain, and Hybrid Planning

Setting goals not only affects performance directly, but also encourages managers to plan more extensively. That is, once goals are set, people are more likely to think systematically about how they should proceed to realize the goals. 18 When people have vague goals, as in domain planning, they find it difficult to draw up detailed action plans and are therefore less likely to perform effectively. When studying the topic of motivation, you will learn about goal theory. Research suggests that goal planning results in higher levels of performance than does domain planning alone. 19

Step 3: Premising

In this step of the planning process, managers establish the premises, or assumptions, on which they will build their action statements. The quality and success of any plan depends on the quality of its underlying assumptions. Throughout the planning process, assumptions about future events must be brought to the surface, monitored, and updated. 20

Managers collect information by scanning their organization’s internal and external environments. They use this information to make assumptions about the likelihood of future events. As Kristin considers her four-year pursuit of her biochemistry major, she anticipates that in addition to her savings and funds supplied by her parents, she will need a full-time summer job for two summers in order to cover the cost of her undergraduate education. Thus, she includes finding full-time summer employment between her senior year of high school and her freshman year and between her freshman and sophomore years of college as part of her plan. The other two summers she will devote to an internship and finding postgraduate employment—much to mom and dad’s delight! Effective planning skills can be used throughout your life. The plan you develop to pay for and complete your education is an especially important one.

Step 4: Determining a Course of Action (Action Statements)

In this stage of the planning process, managers decide how to move from their current position toward their goal (or toward their domain). They develop an action statement that details what needs to be done, when, how, and by whom. The course of action determines how an organization will get from its current position to its desired future position. Choosing a course of action involves determining alternatives by drawing on research, experimentation, and experience; evaluating alternatives in light of how well each would help the organization reach its goals or approach its desired domain; and selecting a course of action after identifying and carefully considering the merits of each alternative.

Step 5: Formulating Supportive Plans

The planning process seldom stops with the adoption of a general plan. Managers often need to develop one or more supportive or derivative plans to bolster and explain their basic plan. Suppose an organization decides to switch from a 5-day, 40-hour workweek (5/40) to a 4-day, 40-hour workweek (4/40) in an attempt to reduce employee turnover. This major plan requires the creation of a number of supportive plans. Managers might need to develop personnel policies dealing with payment of daily overtime. New administrative plans will be needed for scheduling meetings, handling phone calls, and dealing with customers and suppliers.

Planning, Implementation, and Controlling

After managers have moved through the five steps of the planning process and have drawn up and implemented specific plans, they must monitor and maintain their plans. Through the controlling function (to be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter), managers observe ongoing human behavior and organizational activity, compare it to the outcome and action statements formulated during the planning process, and take corrective action if they observe unexpected and unwanted deviations. Thus, planning and controlling activities are closely interrelated (planning ➨ controlling ➨ planning . . .). Planning feeds controlling by establishing the standards against which behavior will be evaluated during the controlling process. Monitoring organizational behavior (the control activity) provides managers with input that helps them prepare for the upcoming planning period—it adds meaning to the awareness step of the planning process.

Influenced by total quality management (TQM) and the importance of achieving continuous improvement in the processes used, as well as the goods and services produced, organizations such as IBM-Rochester have linked their planning and controlling activities by adopting the Deming cycle (also known as the Shewhart cycle).

It has been noted on numerous occasions that many organizations that do plan fail to recognize the importance of continuous learning. Their plans are either placed on the shelf and collect dust or are created, implemented, and adhered to without a systematic review and modification process. Frequently, plans are implemented without first measuring where the organization currently stands so that future comparisons and evaluations of the plan’s effectiveness cannot be determined. The Deming cycle , shown in Exhibit 17.6 , helps managers assess the effects of planned action by integrating organizational learning into the planning process. The cycle consists of four key stages: (1) Plan—create the plan using the model discussed earlier. (2) Do—implement the plan. (3) Check—monitor the results of the planned course of action; organizational learning about the effectiveness of the plan occurs at this stage. (4) Act—act on what was learned, modify the plan, and return to the first stage in the cycle, and the cycle begins again as the organization strives for continuous learning and improvement.

Concept Check

• What are the five steps in the planning process?
• What is the difference between goal, domain, and hybrid planning?
• How are planning, implementation, and controlling related?

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Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA)

PDCA is an improvement cycle based on the scientific method of proposing a change in a process, implementing the change, measuring the results, and taking appropriate action. It also is known as the Deming Cycle or Deming Wheel after W. Edwards Deming, who introduced the concept in Japan in the 1950s. It is also known as PDSA, where the “S” stands for “study”.

The PDCA cycle has four stages:

• Plan — determine goals for a process and needed changes to achieve them.
• Do — implement the changes.
• Check — evaluate the results in terms of performance
• Act — standardize and stabilize the change or begin the cycle again, depending on the results

PDCA is the foundation of continuous improvement or kaizen. Leaders set targets (plan) against a stable baseline of performance. Teams implement improvements (Do) to achieve the targets. Then they measure (Check) the change to evaluate performance against the target. If the team has achieved a measurable gain, it standardizes (Act) the new method by updating the standardized work. This ensures the improvement is stable.

History of PDCA

Walter A. Shewhart was the first to develop a repeating cycle for improvement dubbed the Shewhart Cycle:

Edward Deming expanded the Shewart cycle into a four-step pattern for Japanese audiences. The Deming cycle related heavily to the concept of product quality, innovation, and learning-by-doing over the entire life cycle of a product.

Specifically, the Deming cycle runs:

1.  Design  the product with appropriate testing. 2.  Make  the product and test it in production and in the lab. 3.  Sell  the product to the market. 4.  Test  the customer experience and redesign for improvement.

In 1951, the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) altered Deming’s framework into the more recognizable PDCA cycle. Although well over half a century has passed since the introduction of the Deming cycle to executives in Japan, most open-ended approaches still seek to repeat learning cycles as rapidly as possible, for obtaining customer feedback and making improvements in all pertinent areas.

The language may change slightly, but the basic thinking has not changed much. Consider the three-phase concept— Build ,  Measure ,  Learn —popularized by Eric Ries in his book,  The Lean Startup . His iterative process is fundamentally similar to both the original Shewhart and Deming cycles. Words may change or be slightly altered, but the timeless, classic concepts stay the same.

Additional Resources

• Test Your PDCA Thinking By Reading Your A3 Backwards
• Create a Real A3, Do More Than Fill In Boxes
• Hazards at the Huddle Board: How to Coach a Team Away from “Fast Thinking” to Disciplined PDCA
• Practical Guidance for Using Humble Inquiry in PDCA Problem Solving and Coaching
• The Key to Lean — Plan, Do, Check, Act!
• Four Types of Problems — Art Smalley

Privacy Overview

How to apply the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) model to improve your business

Reading time: about 7 min

• Professional development
• Project management

Most businesses want to improve. But when it comes to actually making needed changes, many fall short. Bureaucracy, silos, and even culture can block progress and stall innovation.

The Plan-Do-Check-Act model helps break companies out of stagnancy and transition to a system of continuous improvement. Learn how the PDCA cycle works and what benefits you can gain from using it at your company.

What is PDCA?

The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) model, also known as the Deming wheel or the Deming cycle, is an iterative method for continual improvement of processes, products, or services and is a key element of lean management.

The PDCA model was developed in the 1950s by William Deming as a learning or improvement process based on the scientific method of problem-solving. Deming himself called it by another term—the Shewhart cycle—because he created the model based on an idea from his mentor, Walter Shewhart.

As all of these names suggest, the PDCA cycle is a loop rather than an end-to-end process. The goal is to improve on each improvement in an ongoing process of learning and growth.

When should you use the PDCA process?

The Plan-Do-Check-Act model is a helpful tool that can be used for a number of applications:

• Exploring and testing multiple solutions in a small, controlled trial
• Avoiding waste by catching and adapting ineffective solutions before rolling them out on a large scale
• Implementing Total Quality Management or Six Sigma initiatives
• Developing or improving a process

What is great about the PDCA cycle is that it can be applied across industries and organizational types.

Pros and cons of PDCA

The PDCA cycle has a number of advantages and disadvantages. Consider both before you decide to apply Plan-Do-Check-Act to different projects.

Versatile: You can use PDCA in a variety of business environments and for a number of applications. Potential use cases include project management, change management, product development, and resource management.

Simple and powerful: The PDCA model is simple and easy to understand, yet it is a powerful driver for meaningful change and improvement while minimizing waste and increasing efficiency.

Hard to do: Though the model is simple, the work isn’t easy. Because PDCA breaks process improvements into smaller steps, it can be slow and probably isn’t a great solution for urgent projects.

Requires commitment: PDCA is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing, continuous process and therefore requires commitment and buy-in from the top down. Without committed leadership, the PDCA cycle can’t work effectively for the long term.

The PDCA model

Sold? Learn the four stages in the PDCA cycle (which you can probably guess from the name) to start using it.

The planning stage is for mapping out what you are going to do to try to solve a problem or otherwise change a process. During this step, you will identify and analyze the problem or opportunity for change, develop hypotheses for what the underlying issues or causes are, and decide on one hypothesis to test first.

As you plan, consider the following questions:

• What is the core problem we need to solve?
• Is this the right problem to work on?
• What information do we need to fully understand the problem and its root cause?
• Is it feasible to solve it?
• What resources do we need?
• What resources do we have?
• What are some viable solutions?
• What are the measures of success?
• How will the results from a small trial translate to a full-scale implementation?

During this stage, an affinity diagram can help you and your colleagues organize a large number of ideas into groups. Once you have determined your course of action, write down your expected results. You will check your results against your hypothesis and expectations in the “Check” stage.

The next step is to test your hypothesis (i.e., your proposed solution). The PDCA cycle focuses on smaller, incremental changes that help improve processes with minimal disruption.

Test your hypothesis with a small-scale project, preferably in a controlled environment, so you can evaluate the results without interrupting the rest of your operation. You might want to test the solution on one team or within a certain demographic.

Once you have completed your trial, it’s time to review and analyze the results. This stage is important because it allows you to evaluate your solution and revise your plans as necessary. Did the plan actually work? If so, were there any hiccups in the process? What steps could be improved or need to be eliminated from future iterations?

Your evaluation at this stage will guide your decisions in the next step, so it is important to consider your results carefully.

Finally, it is time to act. If all went according to plan, you can now implement your tried-and-tested plan. This new process now becomes your baseline for future PDCA iterations.

Consider the following questions before you act:

• What resources do you need to implement the solution at full scale?
• What training is needed for successful implementation and adoption?
• How can you measure and track the performance of the solution?
• What opportunities are there for improvement?
• What have we learned that can be applied to other projects?

If the plan did not pan out as expected, you can cycle back to the planning stage to make adjustments and prepare for a new trial.

Plan-Do-Check-Act example

So what does the PDCA model look like in action? 

In 2019, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Ningbo Women and Children’s Hospital in China applied the Plan-Do-Check-Act model to shorten the emergency decision to delivery interval (DDI) time. This is the time it takes between the decision to conduct a caesarean section and the delivery of a newborn. Shortening this time period in emergency situations is critical to saving lives and improving patient outcomes. 

Here’s how they did it:

Plan: In 2019, the hospital had an average DDI time of 14.40 minutes. Their process analysis identified three main causes impacting DDI time: 

• A defective process
• Lack of first-aid experience
• Poor cooperation among departments

Do: The team developed improvement measures for each cause including: 

• Simplifying the surgical process to speed up the pre-op routine
• Establishing a special DDI team to respond to emergency situations
• Standardizing DDI team working processes
• Creating an emergency treatment team, featuring senior doctors with clinical first-aid experience
• Implementing a variety of regular training, such as obstetrical safety meetings, emergency C-section process classes, and practical and theoretical trainings
• Conducting multi-department emergency treatment drills

Check: The hospital monitored and analyzed progress monthly, creating regular evaluation summaries and refining the cause analysis and improvement measures over time. 

Act: After refining their processes, the hospital’s improvements optimized C-section delivery processes, increased collaboration across departments, and shortened the average emergency DDI to 12.18 minutes in 2020.

Supporting Kaizen with the PDCA cycle

The Plan-Do-Check-Act model is a particularly useful tool for companies who follow the Kaizen method . Kaizen is an organizational mindset and culture focused on small, frequent changes that lead to significant improvements over time.

The PDCA cycle supports the Kaizen philosophy by providing the framework for developing and implementing continuous improvements.

Using Lucidchart to continuously improve

Lucidchart is a visual workspace that helps teams and companies map out their processes and visualize their data in new ways. Use Lucidchart to visualize your PDCA cycle and help you through each step of the process. As you plan your project, you can create a fishbone (cause-and-effect) diagram to visualize problems and potential causes.

During the “Do” stage, map out the new processes you plan to try. Use data linking to connect real-time data to your diagrams and keep track of your results. Once you have a solution you’re ready to implement, use Lucidchart to create diagrams visualizing the new processes. Lucidchart makes it easy to share documents with your team so they can quickly learn and understand the changes.

If you’re continuously improving, it can be easy to lose track of your changes over time. Keep everyone on the same page by documenting your continual progress in Lucidchart.

Learn more about how to elevate your business.

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

Related articles

The Kaizen methodology is an easy way to engage employees and develop a culture of continuous improvement. It strives to eliminate silos, egos, and waste and instead aims for efficient and standardized processes. See why you should use Kaizen and how you can get started.

No matter how good the idea, changes won't last without a solid process improvement plan in place. Learn the essential steps involved with every process improvement plan.

Bring your bright ideas to life.

or continue with

Lean Business Planning

Get what you want from your business.

It’s a Continuous Business Planning Cycle, not Just a Plan

Good lean business planning process isn’t about a plan that you do once. Just like lean manufacturing and lean startups, it’s a business planning cycle of continuous improvement.

Lean Planning is always up to date

With lean planning, your business plan is always a fresh, current version. You never finish a business plan, heave a sigh of relief, and congratulate yourself that you’ll never have to do that again. Forget the use it once and throw it away plan. You don’t store it in a drawer to gather dust.

However, this kind of regularly updated planning is clearly better for business than a more static elaborate business plan. With this kind of business planning process, the plan is smaller and streamlined so you can update it easily and often, at least once a month. Your lean plan is much more useful than a static plan because it is always current, always being tracked and reviewed, frequently revised, and is a valuable tool for managing. You run your business according to priorities. Your tactics match your strategy. Your specific business activities match your tactics. And accountability is part of the process. People on the team are aware of the performance metrics, milestones, and progress or lack of it. Things get done.

Furthermore, even back in the old days of the elaborate business plan, it was always true that a good business plan was never done. I’ve been pointing that out since the 1980s, in published books, magazine articles, and blog posts. That’s not new with lean business planning. It’s just more important, and more obvious, than ever before.

It’s business planning cycle not just a plan

So a business plan is not a single thing. It’s not something you can buy, or find pre-written. You don’t do it and forget it, and you don’t find a business plan or have one written for you. If you work with an expert, consultant, coach, or business plan writer, realize that in real use a business plan lasts only a few weeks before it needs to be reviewed and revised. So your value added from the expert has to help you in the long term. If you don’t know your plan intimately, then you don’t have a plan.

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3.12: The Planning Cycle

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Learning Objectives

• Explain the stages of the planning cycle.
• Explain why the planning cycle is an essential part of running a business.

Organizations have goals they want to achieve, so they must consider the best way of reaching their goals and must decide the specific steps to be taken. However, this is not a linear, step-by-step process. It is an iterative process with each step reconsidered as more information is gathered. As organizations go through the planning, they may realize that a different approach is better and go back to start again.

Remember that planning is only one of the management functions and that the functions themselves are part of a cycle. Planning, and in fact all of the management functions, is a cycle within a cycle. For most organizations, new goals are continually being made or existing goals get changed, so planning never ends. It is a continuing, iterative process.

In the following discussion, we will look at the steps in the planning cycle as a linear process. But keep in mind that at any point in the process, the planner may go back to an earlier step and start again.

Stages in the Planning Cycle

Define objectives

The first, and most crucial, step in the planning process is to determine what is to be accomplished during the planning period. The vision and mission statements provide long-term, broad guidance on where the organization is going and how it will get there. The planning process should define specific goals and show how the goals support the vision and mission. Goals should be stated in measurable terms where possible. For example, a goal should be “to increase sales by 15 percent in the next quarter” not “increase sales as much as possible.”

Develop premises

Planning requires making some assumptions about the future. We know that conditions will change as plans are implemented and managers need to make forecasts about what the changes will be. These include changes in external conditions (laws and regulations, competitors’ actions, new technology being available) and internal conditions (what the budget will be, the outcome of employee training, a new building being completed). These assumptions are called the plan premises. It is important that these premises be clearly stated at the start of the planning process. Managers need to monitor conditions as the plan is implemented. If the premises are not proven accurate, the plan will likely have to be changed.

Evaluate alternatives

There may be more than one way to achieve a goal. For example, to increase sales by 12 percent, a company could hire more salespeople, lower prices, create a new marketing plan, expand into a new area, or take over a competitor. Managers need to identify possible alternatives and evaluate how difficult it would be to implement each one and how likely each one would lead to success. It is valuable for managers to seek input from different sources when identifying alternatives. Different perspectives can provide different solutions.

Identify resources

Next, managers must determine the resources needed to implement the plan. They must examine the resources the organization currently has, what new resources will be needed, when the resources will be needed, and where they will come from. The resources could include people with particular skills and experience, equipment and machinery, technology, or money. This step needs to be done in conjunction with the previous one, because each alternative requires different resources. Part of the evaluation process is determining the cost and availability of resources.

Plan and implement tasks

Management will next create a road map that takes the organization from where it is to its goal. It will define tasks at different levels in the organizations, the sequence for completing the tasks, and the interdependence of the tasks identified. Techniques such as Gantt charts and critical path planning are often used to help establish and track schedules and priorities.

Determine tracking and evaluation methods

It is very important that managers can track the progress of the plan. The plan should determine which tasks are most critical, which tasks are most likely to encounter problems, and which could cause bottlenecks that could delay the overall plan. Managers can then determine performance and schedule milestones to track progress. Regular monitoring and adjustment as the plan is implemented should be built into the process to assure things stay on track.

Practice Question

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The Planning Cycle: Essential Part of Running a Business

Following the planning cycle process assures the essential aspects of running a business are completed. In addition, the planning process itself can have benefits for the organization. The essential activities include the following:

• Maintaining organizational focus: Defining specific goals requires managers to consider the vision, mission, and values of the organization and how these will be operationalized. The methods and selected goals can demonstrate that the vision, mission, and values statements are working documents that are not just for show but prescribe activities.
• Encouraging diverse participation: Planning activities provide an opportunity for input from different functions, departments, and people. Some organizations establish planning committees that intentionally include people from diverse backgrounds to bring new perspectives into the planning process.
• Empowering and motivating employees: When people are involved in developing plans they will be more committed to the plans. Allowing diverse input into the planning cycle empowers people to contribute and motivates them to support the outcomes.

PRactice Question

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There are several stages, or steps, in the planning process. It is not unusual to have to repeat steps as conditions change. This process is essential to a business to maintain focus, gather diverse opinions, and empower and motivate employees.

Contributors and Attributions

• The Planning Cycle. Authored by : John/Lynn Bruton and Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Image: Stages in the Planning Cycle. Authored by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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What Is a Business Planning Cycle?

A business planning cycle is a logically sequenced plan of action that is designed to aid in the task of company planning. The cycle will often focus on the establishment of viable operational plans that ensure a smooth production process, as well as addressing issues such as the ordering and receipt of raw materials, the housing of finished goods prior to transport to customers, and even the shipping processes used to deliver those finished goods. The typical business cycle will address front, middle, and back office functions, making sure that all aspects of the company work in tandem for the benefit of the business itself.

While there is no one ideal way to create a viable business plan, the tools used in a business planning cycle are fairly uniform. The cycle will normally begin with an assessment of the nature of the company, identifying what the business is all about, its goals, and even what has been done to establish the facilities in which the business will operate. This serves as the starting point for the planning, making it possible to then follow through on the operating process from a point of origin to a point of completion.

Once the task of establishing what the business is and what it wants to accomplish, the next phase of the planning cycle will involve identifying the major phases of that ongoing cycle. One simple approach is to create specific categories that address the sequence necessary to manufacture goods and services. This will usually begin with securing raw materials, move on to the manufacturing process itself, and then culminate in the delivery of those finished goods to customers.

With the basics of the business planning cycle arranged, the next step will involve identifying the particulars of each one of those stages or phases. For example, issues such as the establishment of purchasing policies and procedures will be created. The layout of the production floor will be planned in detail, making sure the process minimizes waste as much as possible. From there, procedures for storing and inventorying finished goods is often addressed. Finally, the processes for order taking and fulfillment will be put in place, followed by instructions on how to go about delivering those ordered goods to customers and receiving payment for those goods.

Creating a viable business planning cycle is not the province of large companies. Even small businesses that are operated out of the home can make use of this type of planning tool, and make sure the general operation is efficient and responsible in terms of using resources to best effect. When owners do not feel comfortable with creating a business planning cycle, consulting firms can be called in to help with this process, making it much easier to move forward as a company.

After many years in the teleconferencing industry, Michael decided to embrace his passion for trivia, research, and writing by becoming a full-time freelance writer. Since then, he has contributed articles to a variety of print and online publications, including SmartCapitalMind, and his work has also appeared in poetry collections, devotional anthologies, and several newspapers. Malcolm’s other interests include collecting vinyl records, minor league baseball, and cycling.

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• By: WavebreakMediaMicro The typical business cycle makes sure that all aspects of the company work in tandem for the benefit of the business itself.
• By: Eugenio Marongiu Even small businesses operated out of the home should create a viable business planning cycle.

Module 3: Planning and Mission

Introduction to the planning cycle, what you’ll learn to do: explain the stages of the planning cycle.

Planning is often viewed as a linear process, with a sequence of steps taken in order. Although this is true, it is also true that at any point in the planning process it may be necessary—because of changing conditions or unexpected results—to go back and change earlier decisions. This section will look at planning with both a sequential and cyclical approach.

• Introduction to The Planning Cycle. Authored by : John/Lynn Bruton and Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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Are you just being lazy, power coaching sessions- what happens, what happens to you when "change" happens, managing change the people side, performance management – plan – do –review cycle.

 Performance Management is about a cycle of Planning – Doing and Reviewing

Planning is about… 

• Planning what the organisation wants to achieve for the year
• Planning objectives for employees
• Making sure employees are focused
• Making sure employees have the skills to deliver
• Making sure employees feel motivated to deliver

Doing is about….

• Creating Action Plans
• Ensuring the right things are done day to day
• Empowering employees but keeping in touch as a manager via 121s
• Coaching for performance
• Nipping underperformance in the bud

Reviewing is about….

• An annual review at minimum
• Encouraging managers and leaders to have regular 121s
• A formal opportunity to recognise results
• Ensuring employees have quality 121 time with their manager
• Re-establishing objectives for the year ahead

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