Seminar 3

There are three levels of planning. They are the Strategic plan, the Tactical plan, and the Operational plan. It is the responsibilities of the top level managers to comprise and create the strategic plan, and will consist of action plans that will focus on the organization's mission, goals to work toward the mission, and strategies to achieve the goals.

Mid-level managers will be responsible for creating and implementing the tactical plans, and it will include a clear objective, prediction of future market trends , and a complete description of the strategies. The tactical plan is the most specific plan describing and answering the five questions of who, what, when, where and how each strategy will take place to accomplish the goal and objective. When combined with work teams, tactical plans are important contributors to the success of the strategic plan, and teams use their plan to manage, to make decisions and to grow their business. It is important that the tactical plan be constantly checked and verified to ensure it is moving closer to the goals defined in the strategic plan, because it is very easy for it to change due to someone's interests or disagreement with the strategic plan.

The third and final plan is operational. Operational planning guides the company in setting procedures and priorities that is needed to accomplish the objective, and is an ongoing process that is approved and carried out by the frontline or operational manager and the staff. The approval process is designed to insure that the company is making every effort to respond to all of the anticipated opportunities and challenges that are predicted to be in the company’s future. One of the challenges is to identify and organize the company’s data so that it can assess how well the company is doing to achieve its strategic goal. For the planning function to be successful, the strategic, tactical, and operational plans must be jointly created and implemented by all levels of management...