Companies, large or small, can identify problems and establish overall goals for their business, but they need specific plans to make progress. The planning stage includes courses of action and identifies the results that the company wants to see. These results translate into objectives at the different levels of the organization. A department manager may have the objective to increase sales by 10 percent. This becomes an objective of selling 15 more systems this month for one of his employees. To maintain planning clarity, the type of objective must remain the same throughout this translation down the organization.