DiY strategy - I don't think so

A quick look in the business section of any book store or a search on-line will reveal an absolute multitude of books on strategic management.  Professor Richard Whittington (a prominent academic in the area of corporate strategy currently at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford) said it beautifully at the start of his 2001 book 'What is strategy and does it matter' when he observed that there is a basic implausibility about these books.  If they genuinely offer the secrets of strategic planning, something we pay top executives a great deal of money to perform, why so many books and why so cheap?

I can't help likening them to books on sex education where you can gain some of the basics but just by reading the books you will never become expert or even that good, you have to get a little experience...........  Yet the management guru industry and the popular presses churn them out by the score in the same vein as they churn out books on how to get fit the easy way.

Does this mean you shouldn't buy a book on strategy?  No, you should but the key message is that don't expect it, or let it, become your strategic planning bible.  Strategic planning is about thinking because every situation faced will be unique and the people facing it will have never been there before.  So the book can give you an idea about maybe how to start going about the process but it is more like a star on the horizon than a map to the future.

If you are going to buy a book, and I encourage you to do so, these authors are pretty good (in my humble opinion);

  • Henry Mintzberg - should be the most popular but Henry has never been drawn to become a popularist
  • Richard Whittington - Always provides a very balanced view
  • Bob de Wit and Ron Meyer - Have produced a good postgrad level text (though there are bound to be others)
  • Robert Grant - Always worth reading
This list is in no way meant to be exclusive as there are stacks of books on strategy I haven't read (I don't have the time to read them all even if I had the inclination!!!) but merely a good place to start.

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