Planning is the fundamental function of management that involves anticipating the future and determining a course of action to achieve goals. It is goal-oriented, primary, pervasive across managers and organizations, intellectual involving imagination and adjustment, continuous as assumptions change, forward-looking to consider the future, and involves choice through decision making. The objectives of planning are to focus on objectives and results, reduce uncertainty and change, provide direction, encourage innovation, help with coordination, guide decision making, enable decentralization, provide economy, and facilitate control.