战略计划价值

The Real Value of Strategic Planning -- forthcoming in Sloan Management Review
The goal of a strategic planning process should not be to make strategy but to build
prepared minds that are capable of making sound strategic decisions.
Sarah Kaplan and Eric D. Beinhocker
Sarah Kaplan, formerly an innovation specialist with McKinsey & Company, is a Ph.D.
candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Eric D. Beinhocker is a principal in
McKinsey’s London office. They can be reached at sarah.kaplan@sloan.mit.edu and
Eric.Beinhocker@McKinsey.com.
Most companies invest a significant amount of time and effort in a formal, annual
strategic planning process -- but many executives see little benefit from the investment.
One manager told us, “Our planning process is like a primitive tribal ritual -- there is a
lot of dancing, waving of feathers and beating of drums. No one is exactly sure why we
do it, but there is an almost mystical hope that something good will come out of it.”
Another said, “It’s like the old Communist system: We pretend to make strategy and
they pretend to follow it.”
Management thinker Henry Mintzberg has gone so far as to label the phrase “strategic
planning” an oxymoron.1 He notes that real strategy is made informally -- in hallway
conversations, working groups, and quiet moments of reflection on long plane flights --
and rarely in the panelled conference rooms where formal planning meetings are held.
Our own research on strategic planning supports Mintzberg’s observation: We found
that few truly strategic decisions are made in the context of
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