Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Mangament

I first came across Mintzberg (one of the 3 authors of this book) over 10 years ago while doing my MBA in Europe. At the time I thought his thinking was dead on target. Having spent most of the years since growing a company (learning things that one has difficulty learning in a classroom) and working with people and organizations from all over, I read this book. Almost immediately I found myself agreeing with what is written (easy enough as they start in with explanation and critique of the design and planning approaches to strategy which though part of the game are dangerous if focused on too rigidly).I found this book to be very comprehensive and it certainly has a lot to offer anybody who wishes to learn about corporate strategy. Being largely a literature review with commentary, it has too much information for people to simply take away a few simple messages to apply in a work situation but I vastly prefer this to "fondue books" that have a single concept which barely justifies a magazine article but which get padded out to be sold as a book. With a little thought, the book can help some very valuable ways of seeing things form in your mind and you can - to use their imagery - get a picture of what an elephant might be.For readers doing research, I feel you will need to either know or read much of the material referred to in the text to get a high resolution grasp of what the elephant is. For readers looking to use elephants in their business, I recommend that you use a highlighter and, after reading the book, use the highlighted points to form an image of your image and remember that just as there are different kinds of elephants (Indian, African, Female, Male, Adult, Baby) - each one an elephant - so too are there different approaches to strategy. Armed with the thoughts that you can take away from this book you will be able to infuse them into your business and benefit from them.Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel have done managers a great service by publishing this book. They don't present a magic wand or a silver bullet but they do lead us to water where we can drink.

This is the most valuable book ever written on strategic management. Be sure to read and apply its lessons well!I have worked in the field of strategic management since before it was called that, both as a practitioner and as a consultant. One of my favorite complaints about books in the field is that they emphasize one facet of developing and implementing stratgies and ignore the others. This book is the outstanding exception to that problemmatic standard of tunnel vision. There's no stalled thinking here about strategic management.If you are like me, you would like to get better results from strategic management. Solving one part of the task and ignoring the others leads to failure just as surely as ignoring strategic managment does. Imbalance in perspective can be equally dangerous. As the authors point out, " . . . The greatest failings of strategic management have occurred when managers took one point of view too seriously." Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel start out by pointing out that there are five different kinds of strategy definitions (as plan, pattern, perspective, position, and ploy). When you read books about strategy, keep these in mind. They begin with the tale of the six blind men and the elephant. Each can grasp one element of the elephant, but cannot grasp the whole. That's the situation the authors are warning you against.They define this work as "a field review not a literature review" so you don't find every book's details. Whew! That's a relief. On the other hand, they are clearly familiar with the literature and cite it where appropriate. The book is designed to "have as much relevance for managers and consultants in practice as students and professors in the classroom." The style is also designed to be "easily accessible." And these goals are well achieved in my view.Although recognizing that the human mind boggles past 7 items (which seems to be the limit of what short-term memory can retain), they found 10 themes in the field. The first three emphasize traditional left-brained thinking of the sort that dominates in business schools: Design, Planning, and Positioning. The next six are other aspects of strategic management that are more right-brained: Entrepreneurial, Cognitive, Learning, Power, Cultural, and Environmental. The final one is focused on transformation, the school of Configuration. Each one receives its own chapter and its weaknesses are displayed.In chapter 12, the reader is encouraged to synthesize the 10 themes into integrated use. There is a table (12.1) that neatly summarizes each theme, a figure (12.2) that shows how they are mutually related, and a remarkably useful figure (12.3) that effectively shows how they can be integrated from perspective and in sequencing.You may be wondering what all of the fuss is about. Basically, strategic management is one of those fields that has yet to emerge with an integrated perspective on the firm. I

Mintzberg has done in previous books a superb analysis of planning as well as management processes (Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning and Mintzberg on Management). This new book is a absolutely necessary for anyone interested on strategy, be it from a conceptual point of view or day-to-day building / developing strategies in real life. In a time when people emphasize changes brought by the internet, e-commerce etc to every company's operations, the book offers a complete review of each strategic school strengths & weaknesses. This sort of view develops one's capabilities of integrating these changes into the strategy process without buzzwords (exception the strategy safari title...).Managers do not need formulas, but a full grasp of all available techniques that can bring superior performance to an organization. The book shows some pitfalls of over-emphasizing certain aspects that are always the cornerstone of formal companies - some processes that are more conceptual than real life. And it brings real life processes back into the strategy process and how to understand and manage them proactively.

If you will have to read ONE strategy book in your life, this is it. Excellent overview and introduction to different schools with pros and cons. Sometimes a bit sarcastic, but that only makes it readable. If you're an aspiring MBA student; read this and you'll even find the strategy courses funny and easy. If you're an practitioner; read this and learn how to see through all your quick-fix consultants that shows up with a new strategy model every now and then.In Short: an extremely useful and interesting book.