Differentiate Between Strategic Planning In Small Business And Those Of Big Business

Planning is an activity we perform before taking action.  It is an anticipatory decision making process of deciding what to do and how to do it before action is required.  Its purpose, he continued, is to facilitate progress and improve performance and that planning allows integrated, consistent, and purposeful action.  Although mistakes can be avoided and problems can be anticipated and overcome before crises arise, but that planning must be based on prudent forecasts and reasonable premises.  And that it cannot be done in an atmosphere of blind optimism and disregard for competitive and environment realities.

Strategic planning, or top management planning, includes the development of overall company objectives and is primarily concerned with solving long-term problems associated with external, environmental influences.  

Selecting any of these requires that a company engage in strategic planning.  How far into the future a firm projects depends on the industry and the anticipated business environment.  After a firm has developed a vision for its future it compares where it would like to be with where it is now and where it will be if it does nothing.  The difference between where a firm would like to be and where it will be if it does nothing is called the planning gap.  Strategic planning is primarily concerned with closing that gap to state Leon, Reinhawch et al (1980).