The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

In this definitive and revealing history, Henry Mintzberg, the iconoclastic former president of the Strategic Management Society, unmasks the process that has mesmerized so many organisations since 1965: strategic planning. One of our most brilliant and original management thinkers, Mintzberg concludes that the term is an oxymoron — that strategy cannot be planned because planning is about analysis and strategy is about synthesis. That is why, he asserts, the process has failed so often and so dramatically.

Mintzberg traces the origin and history of strategic planning through its prominence and subsequent fall. He argues that we must reconcieve the process by which strategies are created — by emphasizing informal learning and personal vision — and the roles that can be played by planners. Mintzberg proposes new definitions of planning and strategy, and examines in novel and insightful ways the various models of strategic planning and the evidence of why they failed. Reviewing the so-called "pitfalls" of planning, he shows how the process itself can destroy commitment, narrow a company's vision, discourage change and breed an atmosphere of politics. In a harsh critique of many sacred cows, he describes three basic fallacies of the process — that discontinuities can be predicted, that strategists can be detached from the operations of the organisation, and that the process of strategy-making itself can be formalized.

Mintzberg devotes a substantial section to the new role of planning, plans and planners, not inside the strategy-making process, but in support of it, providing some of its inputs and sometimes programming its outputs as well as encouraging strategic thinking in general. This book is required reading for anyone in an organization who is influenced by the planning or strategy-making process.

• Introduction: The "Planning School" in Context

1. Planning and Strategy
• What Is Planning Anyway?
• Why Plan (According to Planners)?
• Jelenik's Case for Planning
• And What Is Strategy?
• Planners, Plans and Planning
• A Plan for This Book
2. Models of the Strategic Planning Process
• The Basic Planning Model
• The Core 'Design School' Model
• Premises of the Design School
• Premises of the Planning Literature
• The Initial Ansoff Model
• The Mainline Stiener Model
• Decomposing the Basic Model
• The Objective-Setting Stage
• The External Audit Stage
• The Internal Audit Stage
• The Strategy Evaluation Stage
• The Strategy Operationalization Stage
• Scheduling the Whole Process
• A Missing Detail
• Sorting out the Four Hierarchies: Objectives, Budgets, Strategies, Programs
• Hierarchy of Objectives
• Hierarchy of Budgets
• Hierarchy of Strategies
• Hierarchy of Programs
• The "Great Divide" of Planning
• Forms of Strategic Planning
1. Conventional Strategic Planning
2. "Strategic Planning" as a Numbers Game
3. Capital Budgeting as Ad Hoc Control
3. Evidence on Planning
• Survey Evidence on "Does Planning Pay?"
• Anecdotal Evidence
• The Generic Electric FIFO Experience
• Some Deeper Evidence
• Sarrazin's Study of Exemplary Planning
• Gomer's Study of Planning Under Crisis
• Quinn's findings on Planning Under "Logical Incrementalism"
• The McGill Research on "Tracking Strategies"
• Koch's study of the "Facade" of French Government Planning
• Some Evidence on the PPBS Experience
• Some Evidence on Capital Budgeting
• Concluding the Deeper Evidence
• Planners' Responses to the Evidence
• Faith: "There is no problem"
• Salvation: "Its the process that counts"
• Elaboration: "Just you wait"
• Reversion: "Back to basics"
• Pitfalls: "Them not us"
4. Some Real Pitfalls of Planning
• Planning and Commitment
• Commitment at the Top
• Commitment Lower Down
• "Decentralized" Planning
• Planning and Freedom
• Commitment Versus Calculation
• Planning and Change
• The Inflexibility of Plans
• The Inflexibility of Planning
• Planned Change as Incremental
• Planned Change as Generic
• Planned Change as Short Term
• Flexible Planning: Wanting Things Both Ways
• Planning and Politics
• The Bases of Objectivity
• The Goals Implicit in Planning
• The Politics of Planning
• Politics over Planning
• Planning and Control
• Obsession with Control
• "Our Age is turbulent, Chicken Little"
• Strategic Vision and Strategic Learning
• Illusion of Control?
• Planning as Public Relations
5. Fundamental Fallacies of Strategic Planning
• Some Basic Assumptions Behind Strategic Planning
• Missing Taylor's Message
• The Fallacy of Predetermination
• The Performance of Forecasting
• The Forecasting of Discontinuities
• Forecasting as Magic
• Forecasting as Extrapolation
• Forecasting and "Turbulence"
• The Dynamics of Strategy Formation
• Forecasting as Control (and Planning as Enactment)
• Scenarios Instead of Forecasts
• Contingency Planning Instead of Deterministic Planning
• The Fallacy of Detachment
• Seeing the Forest And the Trees
• The Soft Underbelly of Hard Data
• The Detachment of Planners from Strategy Making
• The Detachment of Managers Who Rely on Planning from Strategy Making
• Learning about Strengths and Weaknesses
• "Marketing Myopia" Myopia
• Attaching Formulation to Implementation
• Connecting Thinking and Acting
• The Fallacy of Formulation
• The Failure of Formalization
• Was Formalization Ever Even Tried?
• The Analytical Nature of Planning
• Intuition Distinguished
• Do the Hemispheres Have Minds of Their Own?
• Simon's Analytical View of Intuition
• Flipping Intuition Across to Analysis
• Planning on the Left Side and Managing on the Right
• The Image of Managing
• The Grand Fallacy
6. Planning, Plan, Planners
• Coupling Analysis and Intuition
• The Planning Dilemma
• Comparing Analysis and Intuition
• Analysis and Intuition in Strategy Making
• A Strategy for Planning
• "Soft" Analysis
• Role of Planning: Strategic Programming
• Step 1: Codifying the Strategy
• Step 2: Elaborating the Strategy
• Step 3: Converting the Elaborated Strategy
• Conditions of Strategic Programming
• First Role of Plans: Communication Media
• Second Role of Plans: Control Devices
• Strategic Control
• First Role of Planners: Finders of Strategy
• Logic in Action
• Desperately Seeking Strategies
• Unconventional Planners
• Second Role of Planners: Analysts
• Strategic Analysis for Managers
• External Strategic Analysis
• Internal Strategic Analysis and the Role of Simulation
• Scrutinization of Strategies
• Third Role of Planners: Catalysts
• Opening Up Strategic Thinking
• Role for Formalization
• The Formalization Edge
• Simon's Interactive Control
• Playing the Catalyst Role
• The Planner as Strategist
• A Plan for Planners
• A Planner for Each Side of the Brain
• Planners in Context
• Forms of Organizations
• Strategic Programming in the Machine Organization
• Right- and Left-Handed Planners in the Machine Organization
• Strategic Programming Under Other Conditions
• Strategic Analysis in the Professional Organization
• Planning and Analysis in the Adhocracy Organization
• Minimal Roles in the Entrepreneurial Organization
• Performance Control in the Diversified Organization
• Planning Under Politics and Culture
• Planning in Different Cultures

Mintzberg is always fun to read, but I should recommend Strategy Safari instead, if you want an overview of different types of strategy.

The interesting thing with this book, is that a lot of people claim that Mintzberg predicts the end of the strategist! Those who do, haven't read the book, as Mintzberg differentiates between different types of "strategists/planners" and shows where thse have a useful role to play in different contexts.

Really recommended reading, but not as your first book on strategy.