Planning is deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when and who is to do it It is the process of thinking before doing.
First three steps of planning are as follows
(i) Setting objectives Objectives specify what an organisation wants to achieve. Therefore, the first step in planning is to set up clear adjectives for the organisation as well as all the departments of the organisation.
(ii) Developing premises Premises are the base upon which plans are drawn They may be forecasts, existing plans or past information. Therefore, the manager is required to make certain assumptions about the future, called premises.
(iii) Identifying alternative courses of action After the setting up of objectives, the managers make a list of alternatives through which the organisation can achieve its objectives as there can be many ways to achieve the objectives and managers must know all those ways to reach these objectives
