The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

Mintzberg's argument is that strategic planning as practised by most organisations is not strategy at all — it is a formalised ritual that produces plans but not strategic thinking, and that the two are different activities requiring different cognitive modes. Strategy, Mintzberg argues, emerges from practice as much as it is designed from above, and the organisations that confuse the document with the thinking pay for it. For product direction this is the most direct critique of roadmap culture on the shelf: most product roadmaps are strategic planning in Mintzberg's sense, and they fail for exactly the reasons he describes. Read alongside Rumelt for the complementary diagnostic and Porter for the strategy Mintzberg is arguing against. Mintzberg is one of the few management academics who writes clearly; the book is long but well-argued.