Mintzberg Crafting Strategy Summary

(Mintzberg, H. 1987. “Crafting strategy”

Summary:

The word ‘crafting’ strategy is more appropriate than planning strategy. Planning strategy brings to mind orderly and systematic thinking, while crafting brings up traditional skill, dedication, and perfection through mastery of detail. Although the majority thinks that strategy involves future planning, facts reveal that it also includes past patterns. Actions and experience over time can help management in realising trends and responding to situations. Thus, it can be argued that strategies might form over time than be formulated, i.e. a strategy can ‘emerge’ from evolving situations than be ‘deliberately’ made. A great fallacy of conventional strategic management is when people associate strategy as something that only happens way up and separate it from the daily details of business. This tends to separate the work of minds and hands, unlike craftsmen, and severs the feedback link between them. It is also important to note that the process of strategy making is influenced by both emergent and deliberate approaches because learning must be coupled with control. In the grass-roots approach, strategies can take root in all places where people have the capacity and resources to learn.  However, reality falls between the two extreme approaches (umbrella and process strategy), where management sometimes sets broad guidelines and sometimes control strategic processes and leaves actual content to others. Research also indicates that, contrary to the conventional view, strategies have long periods of stability and rare periods of significant change and success can be achieved by exploiting strategies during long periods of stability. Furthermore, planning can play a useful role, but it is important to view strategist as a pattern recogniser or learner, one who manages a process in which strategies can emerge as well as be deliberately conceived. The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting discontinuities...