Action Versus Planning

Abstract

A great deal has been said and written in recent years in support of planning, particularly strategic planning. So much has been said that you may feel inadequate if you do not have a strategic plan or a strategic planning committee in place. Many times it seems that poor performance is excused if a strategic plan does not exist. Why have we come to this? Have the purveyors of planning seminars done such a good job in selling that we now rely on a strategic plan to tell us what to do, how to do it, and when to do it? According to others, this is not so—successful companies have “an action orientation” as opposed to a planning orientation. There is a place for the strategic planning process, but it does not belong everywhere.