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"Value Planning addresses today's number one
management issue - building a value management system
- and provides a systematic approach with clear guidance
that will be helpful to any company in creating shareholder
value. I really enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend
it."
- John B. Menzer, Chief Financial Officer, Wal-Mart Stores,
Inc
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What comes to your mind when
you think of the word planning, at least in the
traditional corporate sense? People filling out forms,
presenting overhead charts in dimly lit rooms, negotiating
to get at some agreeable number, rationalizing shortfalls?
If these are the pictures your mind presents, do not worry,
you are not alone. Planning in many companies today is
more of a mechanical exercise, a series of negotiations
and settlements, than it is a value added process. There
is some good news; however, and that is you can do something
about it. Something so profoundly different that it will
change the way you think of planning forever.
Planning is not about forecasting results - it is about
making results happen. It is about planning to
win.
Stop and ponder that for a moment. If you work in a company
that has a traditional planning process it is all about
predicting results given certain assumptions. If you are
a cost center manager planning next year’s spending,
you consider how many people you think you need to hire,
what their salaries are, merit increases for you current
employees, and the like. If you are a marketing manager
you consider how much volume and revenue you can generate
given planned competitor action, advertising and promotion
spending, and so on. If you are a plant manager you consider
how much it will take to produce the volume that marketing
is forecasting. It is all about taking specific input,
and generating a plan based on historical assumptions
of trends and costs.
Value Planning is a whole other story.
Rather than taking input and projecting results based
on history, Value Planning is about making
desired results happen. Companies today have one universally
shared desired result - to create Shareholder Value, and
this is the ultimate promise of Value Planning.
This book will not tell you how to eliminate time spent
on planning, or how to cut back the number of people involved
in the process. Those goals focus on the cost of planning,
but not on the results. The purpose of Value Planning
is to transform the traditional planning process into
a management system to drive Shareholder Value. At
the end of the day this is a much larger challenge, but
immeasurably more meaningful.
To build your understanding of exactly how to make this
revolution happen in your own company, this book has been
carefully crafted. Each chapter describes a key element
of the new management system, and contrasts it with the
way things work today in a traditional organization. Each
chapter also contains a “Self Diagnostic”
to assist the reader in assessing his or her own current
situation, and a descriptive “Improvement Steps”
section for recommended action. As you will see, the chapters
and key elements within naturally build on each other,
making for compelling reading and ease of understanding.
You are about to embark on a learning journey, which I
commend you for. Having shown interest in this book is
in itself a display of a simple desire to make things
better in your organization. Now all it takes is to learn
how. |
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