Effective Planning and Decision Making in a Company

Effective planning and decision making are paramount in the steering of a company's production process. In the corporate world, planning has is the key factor in management. Primarily, the management is a product of planning that is considered right from the beginning of any company's operations. Planning is considered to be an activity that is intellectual and directed towards making anticipations and predictions that are meant to handle change that is inevitable. On the other hand, decision-making entails the capability that managers are equipped with in a bid to collect, analyze and synthesize information to obtain alternative options of how to handle the operations of a company. The focus of this paper will be presenting an analysis on the impact of effective planning and decision making in sustaining the competitive advantage in their industry.

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Companies can have a management that plans ahead of any activity to avoid risks that and plunge the company into crises. Therefore, it helps in risk management. This is the best way to maintain the reputation as well as the competitiveness that is evident in the corporate world proactively or than reactively. In this way, a company such as Mcdonald's can integrate the planning into their systems by predicting on the customer base that they might have in two years or more so that the increasing number of clients can be served satisfactorily. In this way, the management o this company can be able to have a sense of direction in regards to their mission and therefore, to measure the performance of the company can be done in a smooth manner. Since the gap between where a company is and where its managers want it to be in the future are bridged by planning, it is essential that every department has a plan for its current and future development.

In management, competitive advantage is achieved by identifying the different levels of managers that do exist in Mcdonald's. First there are the upper-level managers, the mid-level managers as well as the supervisors. Having managers well strategized to handle every operation that occurs in the company by having every level, is advantageous since communication, as well as product enhancement, can be done in a more coordinated manner to sustainably compete in the market. The role of the upper-level managers will be to provide corporate strategies, analyze the growth rates as well as handle the task of new products that can be introduced into the market. The stratification of the managerial department into mid-level managers will mean that their role will be to ensure that the company, in this case, McDonald's, which operate in many states, has a high level of coordination and minimal overlapping of HR teams tasks. As we get down the hierarchy, it is noticeable that the first level managers together with the supervisors have the sole responsibility for implementing the policies, procedures and the work activities of the company. The coordination of the different levels of managers in this hierarchy of management is the determinant aspect of sustaining the competitive advantage in the market with other rival companies. It is essential that the plans to be divided into long-term and short-term to make a decision that are paramount in achieving the set goals and compete successfully in the market.

In planning, decision making has to be a chief factor to consider that the planning is up to date. Since planning takes into consideration the risks that the company might face in future, decision making is a challenge. Therefore, a committee that can evaluate the different suggestions from the employees and the other company shareholders should be selected to handle them professionally. Forecasting and predicting the trends that a company can take in the future is not an easy task, it is worth to have experts that can analyze the options that have been presented by the overall community of a company to select the best option for them all. The experts are considered to be stakeholders that have experience and have practiced the art of decision making for a long period. This does not exclude the new entrants into the decision-making field. The combination of the two aspects; planning and decision making are essential in the overall role of sustaining the competitive advantage of a company, in this case, McDonald's Inc.

In conclusion, the two processes can effectively be combined to have a company that produces desired products in the market. Additionally, the two processes are meant to be executed simultaneously to term the operation of a company as effective. Therefore, effective planning and decision making are a sure path to achieving a company's goals of ameliorating and gaining the favor of the consumers of their products. Companies that use this strategy and implement it to the letter have proved to be successful. One proves of such company that operates in different regions successfully in McDonald's Inc.