[sammyg2]

I'll be sitting in on a 1-1/2 hour long presentation this morning from our CEO presenting our finalized 2011 business strategy, both corporate-wide and specific to this plant.
Lots of planning and thinking goes into it, at least at the larger corporations. Very dry, hundreds of slides, hard to stay focused.
Show of hands, how many of us have sat in on a board meeting?

Not sure how it works at your company, but at the companies I've worked for the process is waaaaay more complicated than you describe it. They don't just pull a number out of their butt.
The CEO and directors come up with goals based on feedback they get from major shareholders and investors, like mutual funds etc. They basically make promises to investors to get them to invest in the company. CEO's are basically just salesmen.

So they develop a stategy to increase shareholder value (drive up the stock price) to attract more investors and keep the ones they have happy.
The top brass presents the goals to the VPs and say,
come up with a plan and strategy to make this happen within these guidlines. The VPs do just that, and once the directors buy it they start implimentation.
If the VP's are not very talented they can come up with bad decisions and BS numbers, but usually those guys don't last that long in big corporations.

Now, one thing I do not like about publically traded corporations, the top brass tends to be short-sighted.
They fight to make this year's numbers, or next year's numbers, but there is not that much incentive to look long term into the future. Too often a CEO only has the job for 5 years or less, so they don't worry that much what happens 6 years from now.
That leads to bloated employment numbers in good times and lay-offs in tough times.