Planning to Plan
Have you ever heard the saying 'Those who fail to plan, plan to fail'? While I can't speak to all facets of
life, this is certainly true in business. Managers find themselves planning for all sorts of things. So much
so, that planning is one of the four major functions of management. In doing so, a manager can be
certain that he or she is working toward some organization goal.
There are three main types of plans that a manager will use in his or her pursuit of company goals,
which include operational, tactical and strategic. If you think about these three types of plans as
stepping stones, you can see how their relationship to one another aids in the achievement of
organizational goals. Operational plans are necessary to attain tactical plans and tactical plans lead to
the achievement of strategic plans. Then, in true planning fashion, there are also plans to backup plans
that fail. These are known as contingency plans. To better understand how each type of plan is used by
managers, let's take a look at an example from Nino's Pizzeria and how Tommy, Martha and Frank carry
out their planning responsibilities.
Strategic Plans
To best understand the relationship between the different types of plans, let's start at the top. Strategic
plans are designed with the entire organization in mind and begin with an organization's mission. Top-
level managers, such as CEOs or presidents, will design and execute strategic plans to paint a picture of
the desired future and long-term goals of the organization. Essentially, strategic plans look ahead to
where the organization wants to be in three, five, even ten years. Strategic plans, provided by top-level
managers, serve as the framework for lower-level planning.
Tommy is a top-level manager for Nino's Pizzeria. As a top-level manager, Tommy must use strategic
planning to ensure the long-term goals of the organization are reached. For Tommy, that means
developing long-term strategies for achieving growth, improving productivity and profitability, boosting
return on investments, improving customer service and finding ways to give back to the community in
which it operates.
For example, Tommy's strategic plans for achieving growth, improving productivity and profitability and
boosting return on investments are all part of the desired future of the pizzeria. Strategic plans also tend
to require multilevel involvement so that each level of the organization plays a significant role in
achieving the goals being strategically planned for. Top-level managers, such as Tommy, develop the
organizational objectives so that middle- and lower-level managers can create compatible plans aligned
with those objectives.
Tactical Plans
Now that you have a general idea for how organizational planning evolves, let's look at the next level of
planning, known as tactical planning. Tactical plans support strategic plans by translating them into
specific plans relevant to a distinct area of the organization. Tactical plans are concerned with the
responsibility and functionality of lower-level departments to fulfill their parts of the strategic plan.
For example, when Martha, the middle-level manager at Nino's, learns about Tommy's strategic plan for
increasing productivity, Martha immediately begins to think about possible tactical plans to ensure that
happens. Tactical planning for Martha might include things like testing a new process in making pizzas
that has been proven to shorten the amount of time it takes for prepping the pizza to be cooked or
perhaps looking into purchasing a better oven that can speed up the amount of time it takes to cook a
pizza or even considering ways to better map out delivery routes and drivers. As a tactical planner,
Martha needs to create a set of calculated actions that take a shorter amount of time and are narrower
in scope than the strategic plan is but still help to bring the organization closer to the long-term goal.
Operational Plans
Operational plans sit at the bottom of the totem pole; they are the plans that are made by frontline, or
low-level, managers. All operational plans are focused on the specific procedures and processes that
occur within the lowest levels of the organization. Managers must plan the routine tasks of the
department using a high level of detail.
Frank, the frontline manager at Nino's Pizzeria, is responsible for operational planning. Operational
planning activities for Frank would include things like scheduling employees each week; assessing,
ordering and stocking inventory; creating a monthly budget; developing a promotional advertisement
for the quarter to increase the sales of a certain product (such as the Hawaiian pizza) or outlining an
employee's performance goals for the year.
