A third way that strategic planning may fail is when a plan gets produced but is never implemented. Scott Adams, in a somewhat cynical commentary on planning in The Dilbert Principle,remarks, ‘‘Somewhere between the hallucinations of senior management and the cold reality of the marketlies something called a business plan. There are two majorsteps to building a business plan: 1. Gather information; 2. Ignore it.’’ The strategic plan as a binder collecting dust on the bookshelfis clearly awell-worn cliche´ thatstill existsin many organizations.Henry Mintzberg famously referred to a 1984 article in Business Week
that concludes ‘‘few of the supposedly brilliant strategies
concocted by planners were successfully implemented.’’
The article also cited the CEO of General Motors as saying
that‘‘. . .after putting their plans on the shelves,they marched
off to do what they were going to do anyway!’’
But why might people spend huge amounts of time producing
plans without seriously attempting to implement them?
One reason is that the binder is a purpose unto itself. The
production of plans serves a symbolic and ritual function that
may temporarily ‘‘appease the gods’’ (head office, accreditation
agencies or government bureaucrats), and allow people
to get on with their more serious work unimpeded.