4 Compelling
Approaches to Strategy
1.
Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning,
(1994), Free Press
Website:
http://www.mintzberg.org/
Mintzberg
is the ultimate academic guru of Strategy. He dissects every aspect of
strategy and concludes that strategic “thinking” by everyone in the
organization is ultimately more important than the plan itself, and that vision
synthesis is a creative, even artistic process that cannot be formalized.
2. Peter
Schwartz, The Art of the Long
View, (1991) Doubleday
Co-founder of the Global Business Network:
http://www.gbn.com/
Trained as an aeronautical engineer with an interest in the space program, Schwartz is well-known for popularizing the scenario-building process of envisioning the future that he helped perfect at Shell and later at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). His approach is holistic and focuses on developing 3 – 4 possible scenarios based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing the organization - and their implications - rather than attempting to identify a single preferred future.
3. Margaret J.
Wheatley,
Leadership and the New Science, (1994) Barrett-Koehler
Her website:
http://www.margaretwheatley.com/
Co-founder of the Berkana Institute:
http://www.berkana.org/index.html
Wheatley’s celebrated book is credited with establishing a fundamentally new way of looking at organizations, vision, and strategy. It has been translated into 18 languages as well as received many awards, including Top Ten Business Books of All Time by Xerox Corp. Her breakthrough approach features an integration of the new science (especially chaos theory, quantum physics, and self organization systems theory) with what is known about individuals and their functioning in groups.
4. Harold A.
Linstone, Decision Making for Technology Executives, (1999)
Artech House
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Technological Forecasting and Social
Change:
http://in3.dem.ist.utl.pt/tfsc/
Systems Science Resources:
http://www.sysc.pdx.edu/sysc_res.html
Currently Dr. Linstone is University Professor Emeritus of Systems Science at Portland State University. His 22 years of corporate experience at Hughes and Lockheed involved him in high-level corporate planning. He’s the editor in chief of the journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change which he founded in 1969. Linstone is closely associated with the Delphi Technique of forecasting as well as using multiple perspectives (i.e. technical, organizational, and personal) to make more realistic decisions and forecasts about complex situations that arise in the real world.