While Sun Tzu's perspective on competition extremely useful in
planning, competitive planning
is only possible where people are working together. The coordination of
planning is necessary within organizations. Planning allows organizations to duplicate their internal processes and
perfect them.
Planning allows different organizations to work together efficiently.
Planning requires developing a
series of steps to produce a well-defined result. You plan for what you can control.
Planning requires people working together.
A complete set of knowledge is required for planning. You must know what raw
materials you need, how to transform them, and exact what the end product will
be. This assumes control of resources, tools, and raw materials. In the science of
strategy, we call this "established knowledge" in "a controlled
environment." Factories, offices, and supply chains are controlled because everyone
agrees on the goals and responsibilities.
Planning is a linear process. Starting with a raw state
and, step-by-step, transforming that raw condition into a finished product. Each
step performs a specific role in that transformation. While some steps might
have to be repeated, the process moves in only one direction, from raw to
finished.
Planning in controlled environments is not
only useful but necessary.
In controlled environments, plans are shared to eliminate waste and
improve efficiency. People working at one stage in the process know what to
expect from earlier stages. Each stages input and output can be measured. The
planned steps results in a predictable outcome. Control means that production
meets prediction as planned.
Planning for controlled environments is so predictable that it
would be nice to think that everything can be controlled.
Unfortunately, even in a perfect world, as plans extend outside of
the organization into areas of discovery, planning and linear thinking
works less and less well.
The problem starts with the complexity and chaotic nature of
information in a competitive environment. We cannot precisely know what
forces are shaping external conditions, the action others may take to
affect the situations, or even the precise effect of our actions.
We try to plan for environments that are outside of our control. We
have marketing plans, sales plans, purchasing plans, and so on. We base
our plans on past results and our future hopes, and, when working with
large groups of people, past results have a certain momentum going into
the future. However, if we are wise, we still plan for the worst as well
as the best.
This is boundary beyond which an organization's and each
individual's adaptive reflexes become more important.
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