Yet customers sometimes have only a vague idea of what they want and no idea what they will want next. Planning gets your colleagues to think longer-term. Only over the longer term can you and your organization exercise more influence over the future than the future exercises over you. The next quarter or year is too short a span to change the rules of the industry by defining a new benchmark for customer value. The holy grail of corporate planning is discovering high-impact market advantages your competitors cannot imitate.
Executives are right to be skeptical about planning.
Meanwhile other firms with no formal planning have triumphed. The solution is not to junk plans but to change the way you think about planning. There are four types of plans. Implementation planning is the most widely used planning method. Other types of plans take into account factors beyond the company's control.