HBR's 10 Must Reads on Technology and Strategy Collection (7 Books)

Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy

by A.G. Lafley, Roger L. Martin, Jan W. Rivkin, and Nicolaj Siggelkow

STRATEGIC PLANNERS PRIDE THEMSELVES on their rigor. Strategies are supposed to be driven by numbers and extensive analysis and uncontaminated by bias, judgment, or opinion. The larger the spreadsheets, the more confident an organization is in its process. All those numbers, all those analyses, feel scientific, and in the modern world, “scientific” equals “good.”

Yet if that’s the case, why do the operations managers in most large and midsize firms dread the annual strategic planning ritual? Why does it consume so much time and have so little impact on company actions? Talk to those managers, and you will most likely uncover a deeper ...