Customer Reviews

Strategic Planning

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For those without any Strategic Management background (or those who have been out of it for a while), this book provides a good foundation to build your knowledge upon. Although it lacks the substance on application to Government stategic planning (or at least as much as I wanted to read about), the information provided helps see and extrapolate potential applicability to non-for-profit organizations. In addition, the time when the book is written (1970's) does not allow the author to explore the latest computer applications on the area of planning and to comment and analyze the latest fast growing/short turnaround technology companies. In addition to reading this book, I recommend expanding your reading further with a more recent book that may address newer companies and government agencies.

The book was a very introductory level guide to strategic planning that would be good for someone who has little knowledge of the process. The book was published in 1979 and shows its age in recommending a full year strategic planning cycle. Most views today suggest this process should be condensed to a short period, yet still be made effective and be integrated with the budgeting process. Overall, as an experienced manager, I was disappointed as it brought very little to light that I didn't already know.

George A. Steiner produced a good basic book on Strategic Planning which describes in clear and simple language the ideas, facts, processes and concepts about strategic planning. Every manager needs to have some basic understanding of strategic planning and this book provides the essential ingredients to assist managers to formulate and/or refine their strategic plans.

The authors could not cover all the critical aspects of this wide and complex subject. Among the essential areas missing are strategic considerations for multinational firms in a global environment. This is a major omission in the current environment as readers would generally wish to be guided so that they can understand the complexity of the global environment, control problems of the global firm, competitive strategies for firms in foreign markets, global strategic planning, entry strategies for firms in global markets, factors that complicate environmental analysis at global level, among other things.

Another critical omission is on how the power of the information, communication technology can be harnessed for the benefit of firms.

Apart from these important omissions, arising largely because of the age of the book (written in the 1970s), the author did a commendable job particularly in his discussion of key considerations in doing planning.

I recommend the book as an important introductory textbook for those new to the subject and as a reference textbook, although the reader would need to also acquire other books to get a more comprehensive picture of the subject. In particular, I would recommend Michael Porter's books "Competitive Advantage and The Competitive Advantage of Nations", Leonard Goodstein et al's book "Applied Strategic Planning", Clayton M Christensen's book "The Innovator's Solution", Mintzberg et al's book "The Strategy Process", Kenichi Ohmae `s book "The Mind of the Strategist", among others.

This is a good introductory book. After reading this, you should read "Strategic Organizational Change" by Michael Beitler.