Mintzberg the Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning Essay The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning by Henry Mintzberg When strategic planning arrived on the scene in the mid-� 1960s, corporate leaders embraced it as “the one best way†to devise and implement strategies that would enhance the competitiveness of each business unit. True to the scientific management pioneered by Frederick Taylor, this one best way involved separating thinking from doing and creating a new function staffed by specialists: strategic planners. Planning systems were expected to produce the best strategies as well as step-� by-� step instructions for arrying out those strategies so that the doers, the managers of businesses, could not get them wrong. As we now know, planning has not exactly worked out that way. While certainly not dead, strategic planning has long since fallen from its pedestal. But even now, few people fully understand the reason: strategic planning is not strategic thinking.
