Strategic Thinking or Strategic Planning?

Abstract

OVER FIFTEEN YEARS AGO Mintzberg argued that the meaning of the term 'strategic planning' was ambiguous, and that there was a need for a clear understanding of that term. 1 Now not only is "stra- tegic planning" still used in a variety of ways, but the situation is made even more complicated by theintroduction of a more recent term, "strategic think- ing". The relationship between the two ideas of strategic planning and strategic thinking is by no means clear in the literature, which is in a state of confusion over this issue. Strategic planning is often used to refer to a programmatic, analytical thought process, and strategic thinking to refer to a creative, divergent thought process. The confusion, however, stems from the fact that although there are frequent usages of the terms in the above ways, various authors still use these terms in fundamentally different ways. While for some strategic thinking and planning are distinct thinking modes which are both useful at different stages of the strategic management process (e.g. Mintzberg), for others, strategic thinking is not so much creative as analytical (Porter); for some, strategic planning has remained an analytical activity but the organisational practices surrounding it have been transformed; for others, the real purpose of analytical tools of strategic planning is to facilitate creativity (strategic thinking); and lastly for others, strategic planning is useless and should be scrapped in favour of strategic thinking.