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The Planning Cycle Setting the Aim of the Plan

How to Spot What Needs to be Done

Planning may be done on a routine basis or may need to be carried out as a result of new ideas, poor performance or pressure from customers or the organisation's environment. This section examines how you can clarify the problems and opportunities that face you.

New Ideas

One simple approach to generating ideas is to look at what irritates you in your life and what seems unnecessarily laborious and tedious. Often this will prompt ideas for improvements, whether these are administrative changes in your organisation or are ideas for new consumer products or services.

SWOT Analysis - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

A more systematic method is to use SWOT Analysis to detail and examine your organisation's Strengths and Weaknesses, and to examine the Opportunities and Threats it faces. Often carrying out an analysis using the SWOT framework will be enough to reveal the changes which can be usefully made.

To carry out a SWOT Analysis for yourself or your organisation, write down answers to the following questions:

  • Strengths:
    • What are your advantages?
    • What do you do well?
    Consider this from your own point of view and from the point of view of your customers or the people who rely on you. Don't be modest, be realistic. If you are having any difficulty with this, try writing down a list of your or your organisation's characteristics. Some of these will hopefully be strengths!

  • Weaknesses:
    • What could be improved?
    • What is done badly?
    • What should be avoided?
    Again this should be considered form an internal and external basis - do your customers perceive weaknesses that you don't see? Do your competitors do any better? Again it is best to be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths at this stage in the planning process.

  • Opportunities
    • Where are the good chances facing you?
    • What are the interesting trends?
    Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
    • Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and industry-specific scale
    • Changes in government policy related to your field
    • Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, etc.

  • Threats
    • What obstacles do you face?
    • What is your competition doing?
    • Are the required specifications for your products and services changing?
    • Is changing technology threatening your position?
    • Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?

Carrying out this analysis is will often be illuminating - both in terms of pointing out what needs to be done, and in pointing out that problems may be smaller than initially anticipated.

Forced Change

In some cases you may need to approach planning as a result of pressure for change. This can come about as a result of:

  • Internal Factors
    • New products, services or requirements of your organisation
    • New technology
    • Changes in the structure of your organisation

  • External Factors
    • Changes in the economy
    • Legal changes
    • Appearance of new technology or ideas
    • Competition
    • Social changes
    • Politics

In cases where change is forced on you, ensure that you react to the cause of the pressure, not to the symptoms of it.

The Planning Cycle Setting the Aim of the Plan

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