Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

Henry Mintzberg provides a panoramic overview of the history of strategic planning. He uses this backdrop to offer powerful insights into strategy development.Mintzberg carefully examines the vexing question of how strategy is formed. His clear differentiation between strategy formation and strategic planning are helpful in understanding the actual creation of strategies vs. the planning for those strategies. He contends strategic planning should be called strategic programming based on the fact that it has little if anything to do with the formation of strategy. He clearly delineates the difference between deliberate and emergent strategy formation while explaining the need to respect both methods. His "black box" of strategy creation, where human intuition works in yet unknown ways, provides insights in how to support and improve a process one cannot hope to fully understand.Mintzberg creates useful and memorable constructs which help sort out strategy's key aspects. First he addresses how strategy is actually formed in the real world, as opposed to how planners think it should be formed. On that foundation he reviews the pitfalls and fundamental fallacies of planning, such as assuming strategy will appear spontaneously out of a planning process not specifically equipped to create strategy. Lastly, he proposes remedies for how strategy creation can actually be fostered to improve results and be integrated into strategic planning.Mintzberg's constructs and perspectives will help business leaders make sense out of the flurry of strategy information which continually bombards them.

Truly, Minztberg's work is one of those if you're interested in the history, evolution, and critique of strategic planning, you must read this. Mintzberg begins with identifying three schools of thought on strategy formation which are the subject of this book:a) Design - sometimes called SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats);b) Planning - process is informal and the chief executive (leader) is the key person; andc) Positioning - focuses on content of strategies such as differentiation, diversification, etc.His point/cynicism is that there must be other ways (than planning) to develop strategies (pp. 2-3).Content:1 Planning and Strategy2 Models of the Strategic Planning Process (basic planning model; decomposing the basic model; sorting out the hierarchies of objectives, budgets, strategies, and programs)3 Evidence on Planning4 Pitfalls of Planning5 Fallacies of strategic Planning6 Planning, Plan, PlannersThis is probably not the book for a practitioner interested in practical how to's related to strategic planning methods. It's about theory, critique, framework, and historical evolution of strategic planning. A must-read for a serious student of this topic.

To put it in one sentence, I found the book boring because the author over-dwells on exploring the multiple definitions of words, and also because the process of "strategic planning" which he criticized in this 1994 book has little to do with how strategy is being formed in big companies in 2015.In the first 300 pages of this book you will learn that planning is about analysis, but strategy is about synthesis, thus these processes are contradictory in nature. You will also learn that it's a bad idea to handle strategy formation to the team of executives who are not in grasp with the day-to-day operations and the products their company is delivering. It is also mentioned that in reality no strategy is ever a result of purely "deliberate" process, but is rather a mix with an "emergent" strategy - with the course of events that happened un-deliberately that is. Would it not be more appropriate had this book been called a "Strategy for dummies"?Even though I tried hard to follow the author's rationale for separating strategy formation from planning, I am still not able to see how can a solid strategy be even proposed if there is no plan showing that this strategy is "doable", and what it will likely mean financially and otherwise. In reality, strategy formation and planning are the two indivisible processes, as one function of planning is to assesses the viability of strategy, and as a result of such assessment the original strategy is is modified more often than not. I do agree with the author though that "strategy formation" sounds better than "strategic planning".Disclosure: I gave up on page 321 and did not read the last third of the book.

This book was once described as "the final nail in the coffin of strategic planning"! It takes strategic planning, as envisioned about 15-20 years ago, and carefully cuts it apart, removing all its pretensions to being strategic in any real sense. But it is not a book that only bashes; it shows the way to make the most of the resources that 'strategic planning' can bring to the organization, while maintaining a jaundiced eye on potential shortcomings.The critical issue is that planning is fundamentally analytical, while strategic thinking and strategy development is synthetic. As was discovered many years ago, you cannot use one to substitute for the other. Each has their place. But most strategic planning operations seem to have a black box for 'Develop Strategy,' and otherwise ignore it. This is like building a Formula 1 race car, but leaving a black box for the engine, and never discussing how it might be obtain or how it would fit.Recommended if you have to deal with strategic plans, planning and planners.

excellent book to have in groups when people start saying we need a strategic plan!

An excellent overview of planning its growth and subsequent exposé of flaws - without doubt one for your collection is strategy is your thing

Aunque aún no lo termino, definitivamente el Sr. Mintzberg es un experto en el tema. Sin embargo, creo que el término caída es muy extremo, sobretodo porque aún veo yo que el término se sigue usando en la actualidad: Planeación Estratégica. Pero respeto su opinión.

Great book and a counter view of tradition strategic planning !