Planning carefully positions and leverages the organization’s resources to move in the desired direction.

Planning ensures that the organization’s plans, people, skills, and processes support the organizational vision. Within an organization there are five possible levels of maturity for planning:

• Ad hoc: The expectation is that the future will be a continuation of today and smart daily operational decisions will achieve the vision.
• Aware: On a periodic basis, such as yearly, a variety of strategies are quickly considered with no systematic exploration of their implications.
• Capable: The organization has a best-practice process for evaluating potential strategies, using clear criteria. It also develops formal plans of action and responses.
• Mature: A systematic process is used to routinely re-evaluate strategies as new information and feedback are available. Thoughtful analysis provides optimum strategies.
• World-class: Innovative new structures and policies have been created that engage the ability of the “learning” organization to grow and adapt as it smoothly executes selected strategies.

How many moves in advance is your business planning?

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