Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning by Henry Mintzberg ISBN: 0-02-921605-2 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 31 January, 1994 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "Must" Reading for Executives
Comment: Even if you don't agree with Henry Mintzberg, this is "must" reading for executives. It is thought-provoking for the individual reader; and it is a great discussion starter for a management team. I highly recommend it!
Dr. Michael Beitler
Author of "Strategic Organizational Change"
Rating: 5
Summary: A Fundamental Look at How Managers Should Think
Comment: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning is an important book, whose significance goes well beyond its subject. Most leaders, managers, and companies have adopted methods of deciding what to do and how to implement them without considering the fundamental assumptions and experiences with those methods. In essence, this important knowledge work is back where the planning of manual work was before Frederick Taylor. What he says has implications for quality, production planning, capacity expansions, new product design, IT, and many ohter functions, processes and activities.
Before you dismiss this point as being merely of academic interest, consider several of Mintzberg's more telling points: Forecasting is seldom accurate for long; creating intense alignment in the wrong direction can make a company vulnerable to sudden shifts in the market; formal staffs can simply create political games; and thinking that is not linked into the important processes of the company will have limited impact. If those points are right, what does it mean about how work should be performed in your organization?
Having been there and done that as both a strategic planner in the early 1970s and a strategy consultant before that, I recognize the disease as he diagnoses it. In fact, many of the people he quotes and evaluates are people I know. I also saw many of the companies improve themselves by doing less planning.
You can only cover so much in one book, but the potential of strategic work is to improve significant communications, thinking and action in the enterprise. That can help eliminate the significant stalls that delay progress. If Professor Mintzberg decides to do a second edition of this book, I hope he will do more with those subjects.
What has been disappointing to me and others who are familiar with the problems that strategic planning has experienced is the lack of alternatives being proposed. Mintzberg has proposed one, but it is pretty primitive. It just gets rid of some of the wasted motion in strategic planning, without building on success.
One of the few advanced processes that I know of is one that I co-authored in the soon-to-be-published, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise. If you are interested in that subject, take a look at that book's introduction.
I was pleased to see Mintzberg challenge Michael Porter to choose a method for selecting among paths for a business or company. When I first read Porter, I felt he waffled on that point, too. My research and experience strongly suggest that paths that leave you better off regardless of the unexpected changes you could experience work best. To locate those paths can be made systematic, as a way of helping people apply both analysis and intuition to finding better alternatives. That is what strategic planning should have focused on. I agree with Mintzberg in assigning importance to the generation of new and better alternatives as one potential benefit of strategy work, whether done by the line executive, a staff person, a consultant, or all of the above together.
I especially liked his awareness of the need for commitment. Involvement is a necessary part of gaining commitment, and the strategy processes that many use misses that important connection.
The book could have been improved, however, by doing some field work with companies which developed strategies that prospered well beyond their peers and seeming potential. What did they do that helped to create these results? Or was it a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day? Without answering that question, Mintzberg leaves us back in the pre Frederick Taylor days, except with a better idea of what does not work.
I have done substantial unpublished research on just that question. It is clear that there are several models that companies have used successfully to develop better strategies, implement them well, adapt to changes in a timely manner, and build systematically on success. I suggest you consider Clear Channel Communications as a company that focuses on rethinking the basic business model, Southwest Airlines as a company that achieves a superior cost position and efficiently transfers benefits from that to all stakeholder groups, and Linear Technology as a company that follows a strategy that should allow it to prosper regardless of the shifts in things it cannot stop or control.
No review of this book would be complete without noting that Mintzberg's persistent skepticism makes for some pretty humorous reading (unless you are one of the writers or planners he is questioning). Be sure you take time to enjoy the subtle humor in his writing.
Well done, Professor Mintzberg! I think this is the best work about how managers should manage their fundamental thinking that I have seen in the last 20 years.
You should be sure to read this book both to understand the lessons of strategic planning and what that implies for other thinking processes in your enterprise. You management education will not be complete until you do.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Realities of the Real Life
Comment: I have read varied books and articles of Mintzberg. All of them convey the realities of the real organizations, not fictions of varied writers and quick-fixer management consultants. This book is about the formal strategic planning school. Mintzberg carefully and with a great detail put the basic assumptions of formal planning under the microscope. Mintzberg especially questioning the assumption that is formal planning is the best way to create strategy and formulation and implementation can be seperated. This book is a good source for people to want to move from fictions and academic rhetoric to the strong and real realities. I advice this book for all sane and realist creatures. Thanks Mintzberg...
 |
Title: Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, Joseph Lampel ISBN: 0684847434 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 25 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
 |
Title:The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning by Henry Mintzberg ASIN: B00005RZ4F Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 24 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.00 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $6.00 |
 |
Title: Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations by Henry Mintzberg ISBN: 0029213711 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: July, 1989 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
 |
Title: Readings In Strategic Management by Arthur A., Jr. Thompson, A. J., III Strickland, Tracy Robertson Kramer ISBN: 0256241465 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $89.10 |
 |
Title: Re-imagine! by Tom Peters ISBN: 078949647X Publisher: DK Publishing Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
