About Lesson
Though planning is a major function of management, it also facilitates a variety of other management activities and provides order, stability, and continuity in operations, it is not without flaws. They are as follows:
- Forecasting Limitations: Planning is reliant on forecasts, and if trustworthy data isn’t accessible to make forecasts, planning will lose a lot of its usefulness.
- Administrative Rigidity and Inflexibility: Planning entails adhering to established norms, processes, and programs. Individuals’ freedom of initiative and drive for creativity is hampered as a result of this.
- It is a time-consuming and costly procedure: It is true that it is an expensive procedure, but it may be made more cost-effective by utilizing the plans to their full potential.
- External Factors’ Influence: External circumstances, which are outside the planners’ control, can sometimes hinder the effectiveness of planning. Unprecedented outbreaks of war, government control, natural disasters, and a slew of other factors are beyond the management’s control.
- Psychological Factors: Psychological considerations also limit the amount of planning that can be done. Because the present is certain, some people value it more than the future. Such people have a psychological aversion to planning.
- Change Resistance: Planners dislike change on occasion, and in other situations, they do not believe it is desirable to bring change because it will elicit resistance from workers. Uncertainties, risks, and dangers.
Measures to Overcome Planning Limitations
- Clearly Stated Goals: The enterprise’s overarching goals must serve as the leading pillars for identifying the goals of individual departments.This would aid in the enterprise’s coordinated planning.
- Install a management information system: The availability of the appropriate information will aid in overcoming issues such as insufficient comprehension of the aims and subordinates’ reluctance to change.
- Careful Preparation: The planning premises provide a foundation for planning.They are predictions about what will happen in the future. Planning always necessitates certain assumptions about what will happen in the future.
- Dynamic Executives: They must take the necessary steps to generate company predictions and planning grounds.A manager must always remember that planning is looking forward and developing plans for an unpredictable future.
- Resource Accessibility: Alternatives should be determined and evaluated in light of the management’s resources.In each choice situation, there are always options.
- Versatility: Because modern business functions in a constantly changing environment, some measure of flexibility must be incorporated into the planning process. There should always be room in the plans for essential additions, deletions, or changes as circumstances dictate.
- Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA): Planners must do a cost-benefit analysis to verify that the advantages of planning outweigh the expenditures.