How an organization benefits from operational planning

Operational planning allows the company to communicate with its employees better. While communicating with its employees, the organization becomes aware of how to work together with its personnel to improve on production. With communication, the business is also able to achieve tremendous coordination at simple levels of operation. As it is defined in Operational planning text by Abraham (2012), this process incorporates making preparations of detailed business plans for the next fiscal year. In a nutshell, operational planning helps the company coordinate its activities well in the achievement of a unified goal.

Relationship between budget and operational planning

Abraham (2012) defined budget planning as ‘the process of matching available business economic resources with what the business needs to spend on implementing its policies’. This means, operational planning helps in laying out the distinct business departments and the activities to be performed in these departments so that budgeting planning department can spell out the resources needed. In budgeted planning, the kind of things that should be budgeted for are the supplies, the estimated mileage for underwriters, payroll for the employees and many other items that should be placed on the payroll, lunch expenses for all agency visits and transport expenses while designing policies for organization. Budget planning and operational planning are related because they significantly feed from each other. There are strategies developed from operational planning but money or resources are needed to deal out with how each of these plans would be instigated.

How system thinking improves decision making in operations

Personally, I think system thinking revolves around activities that make sure all employees are on the same page with the management. In simple terms, system thinking everyone is on the same platform on how to achieve the main goal of the organization. I had immense fun discussing system thinking with my colleagues in school who did not really know what the process is all about and had not read about it. They asked me how I managed to know all the process in business department yet I was just a student. I told them that all I wanted to know was how everyone operates within an organization and how all departments work together to service the policies that are recorded in business books.

Deliberate and emergent strategies

Put simply, a strategy can be defined as a given course or set of action adopted by an organization or a person to the extent of achieving a particular or predetermined goal (Moore 2011). Mintzberg’s emergent strategies are the most influential with the view that every emerging business strategy should accommodate the intentions of a changing reality. An emergent strategy is a set of believes, action and behavior that is consistent over time. Mintzberg’s strategy is the best because it implies that a business has incorporated a learning culture. The difference between deliberate and emergent strategies is that both give an outline of business objectives but the outlines in deliberate strategies are ambiguous compared to the strategies outlined in emergent strategies. Emergent strategies help the future of a business by helping managers point out clear success patterns and strategies for the business. Failure to adopt emergent strategies will make the business less flexible in a highly competitive environment since managers would besticking to the rigid deliberate actions and might not arrive at their most preferable destination.