"Strategic planning is worthless - unless there is first a strategic vision"
About this Quote
Naisbitt’s dash does the real work here, turning what could be a management truism into a warning shot. “Strategic planning” is the safe, budgeted, meeting-heavy activity organizations love because it looks like control: charts, timelines, binders, KPIs. By calling it “worthless,” he’s puncturing the corporate comfort blanket. The provocation isn’t anti-planning; it’s anti-planning-as-substitute-for-thinking.
The hinge phrase “unless there is first” is a hierarchy claim. Vision isn’t a decorative mission statement; it’s the prior act that gives planning meaning. Subtext: many institutions reverse the order because vision is risky. A real strategic vision forces trade-offs, creates enemies, and makes failure legible. Planning, by contrast, can be endlessly refined without ever committing to a future worth betting on. It’s bureaucracy’s favorite kind of motion: busy, defensible, and blame-resistant.
Coming from Naisbitt, a futurist-leaning business thinker best known for reading social signals before they became obvious, the line also carries a cultural critique of late-20th-century management. In an era obsessed with systems and forecasts, he’s reminding leaders that direction beats precision. You can optimize a route all day; if you’ve picked the wrong destination, you’re just arriving efficiently at irrelevance.
It also flatters no one. The quote implies that “strategy” has been hollowed out into procedure, and that the only antidote is imagination disciplined into a guiding picture of what the organization is actually trying to become.
The hinge phrase “unless there is first” is a hierarchy claim. Vision isn’t a decorative mission statement; it’s the prior act that gives planning meaning. Subtext: many institutions reverse the order because vision is risky. A real strategic vision forces trade-offs, creates enemies, and makes failure legible. Planning, by contrast, can be endlessly refined without ever committing to a future worth betting on. It’s bureaucracy’s favorite kind of motion: busy, defensible, and blame-resistant.
Coming from Naisbitt, a futurist-leaning business thinker best known for reading social signals before they became obvious, the line also carries a cultural critique of late-20th-century management. In an era obsessed with systems and forecasts, he’s reminding leaders that direction beats precision. You can optimize a route all day; if you’ve picked the wrong destination, you’re just arriving efficiently at irrelevance.
It also flatters no one. The quote implies that “strategy” has been hollowed out into procedure, and that the only antidote is imagination disciplined into a guiding picture of what the organization is actually trying to become.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
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