📖 The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

1994. Henry Mintzberg.

Even a quarter of a century ago when this was published, Mintzberg was concluding that strategic planning’s day in the sun had long passed. And while a lot of the arguments he makes here are now widely accepted, strategic planning still fails many companies today in the same way he warned it did then.

Most impressive about this book is how well researched it is. Evidenced by 27 pages of references, you quickly get the feel Mintzberg has read and reviewed every major piece of writing on corporate strategy in the preceding 30 or so years since it was popularised. And not just for this book, but rather that he has been immersed in it during the course of his work as a Professor of Management, and for the 5 books written prior (most notably, Mintzberg on Management, 1989).

Definitions

Mintzberg goes to great lengths to try and isolate the terms used in formulating strategy in an effort to differentiate and then critique them. It’s exhaustive, but interesting nonetheless as he tries to cut through the jargon being peddled by consultants and planners at the time. The book has long chapters and sections with titles like What is Planning Anyway?, What is Strategy?, Why Plan?. The phrase “strategic planning” itself has died down a little by now, with the associated activities often split in two and labelled along the lines of strategic thinking, and execution planning.

“Is strategy making simply a process of planning? Or is strategic planning simply another oxymoron, like progressive conservative or jumbo shrimp.”

Highlights

It’s hard to pull out quick highlights as the book is so dense, but some parts of note for me were:

The recognition of emergent strategy as a legitimate part of strategy planning:

The literature of [strategic] planning considers effective strategy making a fully deliberate process, to the virtual exclusion of emergent elements. There is talk occasionally about flexible planning but as with a pregnant virgin, the obvious contradiction is seldom addressed.

The idea of distributing strategy and not centralising it amongst an exclusive group of senior managers:

Might the real problem not so much be in either poor implementation or weak formulation as in forcing an artificial separation between the two? If the formulators get closer to the their implementation (which is typical for entrepreneurs), or the implementers have greater influence over formulation (which is what intrepreneurship means) perhaps there can be greater success in strategy making. Deliberate strategy relies on this separation, while emergent strategy does not.

Efforts to try and define the relationships between the individual tools of planning and strategy:

Do budgets make strategy, express strategy, respond to strategy, or even exist free of strategy?

Inflexibility

The most value for me however was in the passages dedicated to how inflexible planning is, and the ways that will likely limit a company. With the pace of change accelerating today, organisations need to be mindful of how their planning processes can stifle innovation and constrain growth.

“Planning is fundamentally a conservative process”

Mintzberg argues that formal planning in companies tends to have three essential characteristics:
- It is incremental rather than quantum.
- It is generic rather that creative.
- It is orientated to the short terms rather than the long term.

And he then devotes a significant portion of the book laying out the many pitfalls that come with each.

Links for buying it, getting it sent to your local library