Focused on the day-to-day responsibilities of their jobs, many new managers don’t appreciate the need for planning, even operational planning. This is especially so in today’s fast-changing world, where the time frames for planning are continually being shortened. Admittedly, your chances of planning effectively in our unpredictable world are greatly diminished if you approach planning as managers have in the past. Still, a rapidly changing environment is no excuse for not planning. Neither is moving forward when the future is unclear a matter of substituting gut instinct for analytic rigor. Rigor is still needed, but it needs to be more flexible than that of the past. More than in the relatively tranquil past, failure to plan—whether a year, three months, or even a month ahead—can cause confusion and, ultimately, crises in your unit.
In terms of the bigger picture, because your unit’s efforts should support the overall corporate mission, it can make the corporate master plan work—or not. The inability of your unit to fulfill its commitment because of poor planning can mean not.