Crafting Strategy

Crafting Strategy –by Henry Mintzberg Henry Mintzberg recognizes the combination of reason-rational control, the systematic analysis of competitors and markets, company strengths and weaknesses as producing clear-explicit, full-blown strategies. He compares the process of crafting a strategy to a porter at work. Thus, the managers represent craftsmen and strategy is their clay. However, like the porter, the managers sit between a past of corporate capabilities and a future of market opportunities. Henry opines that strategy is one of those words that people define in one way and often use it in another way without realizing the difference. The author is also of the opinion that strategies are plans for the future and also patterns from the past. Therefore, since strategies can be planned and intended, they can also be pursued and realized or not realized. Again, just as plans need not produce a pattern, some strategies that are intended are simply not realized. The author also argues that a pattern need not result from a plan.

In a paragraphs he calls 'Hands and Minds', Mintzberg emphasizes the need for both the worker, who has direct contact with the situation at hand and those who are in position of decision making to work together if a strategy must succeed. The author also argues against a possible purely deliberate strategy or a purely emergent one; rather strategy is a combination of the two. Thus, for Mintzberg, strategies, do not have to be deliberate, they can also emerge. This implies that strategies can form themselves on their own and can as well be formed – a realized strategy can emerge in response to an evolving situation or, it can be brought about deliberately through a process of formulation followed by implementation.

Similarly, effective strategies are said to evolve via different means; sometimes they come about as a