There are 3 main
approaches for managing a company.
The first approach is based on planning for the short term.
The
organization that plans it's steps for the short term survives mainly from it's current customers.
It tries to improve it's products or services by modifying them a bit according to demands come from potential customers.
However , it doesn't put too much effort on it.
the second approach based on planning for the medium term (not longer then one year).
Organization that plans it's steps for for the medium term survives from it's current customers and customers referred to it.
Such organization conducts market research to see how to adapt the product or the services to the changing market so improvements may be done not only upon a request from a specific customer.
Such an organization may put much effort on marketing and unlike the former, it may also do a usage in software tools like BI (business intelligence).
BI tools present the current achievements of the company using reports and graphs. It also show how much effort should be invested in order to accomplish specific targets.
The third approach based on planning for the long term.
What i mentioned for organization that plan it's steps for for the medium term also applies for organization that plan it's steps for for the long term but there is a big difference namely : companies planning for the long term put a lot of effort on human resource.
Such organization treat it's workers as gold mine.
It educates it's employees to ethics and values , take care that they attend courses and professional training and thinks on ways to preserve the human capital and attracts new talents.
It is very common today to replace experienced workers with young inexperienced but 'cheaper' employees or outsourcing jobs to foreign countries. For these companies it seems that they saving money. It may be right for the short term but for the long term they realize that actually they loose. They loose experienced workers with a lot of knowledge.