RISE & FALL OF STRATEGY

AMMAR AKHTER UZ ZAMAN (21393)

 Strategic Planning is analysis and Strategic thinking is synthesis
 Strategic Planning is about breaking down a goal or set of intentions into steps, formalizing those steps so that
they can be implemented almost automatically and articulating the anticipated consequences or results of each
step.
 Strategic thinking involves intuition and creativity
 Strategy making should encourage informal learning to produce new perspective and combinations
 Planning needs committing style of management from managers
 The fallacies of Strategic Planning are;
 The fallacy of Prediction: Planning may predict based on certain repetitive patterns yet certain discontinuities like
COVID, technological innovation, price increase etc. is virtually impossible
 The fallacy of detachment: Planners neatly presented hard data at regular intervals so senior managers doesn’t feel the
need to leave their executive suites. Real strategists get their hands dirty and digging for ideas. So they rely on
formalized information where as strategy making involves softest forms of information like gossips, hearsay and
subconscious elements of human thinking.
 The fallacy of formalization: Formal systems are made for planning yet these formalized systems doesn’t process
human intuitions, forecast discontinuities, inform detached managers and create novel strategies. That’s why Strategic
Planning Should be called as Strategic Programming.
 Planning as Strategic Programming: Planning cannot generate strategies yet it can be programmed through codification,
elaboration and conversion process. But Managers shouldn’t rely on these programs rather leave their strategies flexible as
broad visions to adapt the changing environments.
 Plans as Tool to Communicate and Control: Plans are used for coordination to ensure that everyone in the organization pulls
in the same direction. Plans in the form of programs like schedules, budgets, and so on can be prime a media to communicate
strategic intentions.
 Planners as Strategy Finders: Strategies are emergent rather deliberate in most cases so planners can go to places where they
not normally visit to find patterns amid the noise of failed experiments, seemingly random activities, and messy learning.
 Planners as Analysts: Effective planners spend a good deal of time not so much doing or even encouraging planning as
carrying out analyses of specific issues. It should be Planning as Learning.
 Planners as Catalysts: Planners should encourage managers to think about the future in creative ways. They may provocation
or shock tactics like raising difficult questions and challenging conventional assumptions for this purpose.
 Planner who relies on conventional planning and uses analytical thinking, organizing scheduling planning activities are called
Right-Hand Planner.
 Planners who conduct quick and dirty studies and likes to find strategies in strange places and more inclined towards intuitive
processes are called Left-Hand Planners.
 Organizations need both types of planners, and it is top management’s job to ensure that it has them in appropriate proportions.
 In nutshell Strategic planning rather than trying to seal it in a formalization process should have been loosen up by using
creative thinking, intuition and subtle & softest side of human thinking.