Leadership requires strategy.

But there is far more to strategy than just announcing where an organization is headed. The authors of Strategy Safari use the analogy of a syringe to explain this misconception. Where leaders believe it is solely their responsibility to fill a syringe with deliberate strategy and then inject it into the followers. What causes this misconception? Another analogy. The authors liken understanding all element of strategy to blind men touching an elephant and trying to describe the whole creature. Each individual section is not the whole.

To that end, the authors seek to explore the ten common schools of strategy:

1. The Design School views strategy formation as a process of conception.
2. The Planning School views as a formal process, which follows a rigorous set of steps from analysis of the situation to the development and exploration of various alternative scenarios.
3. The Positioning School views strategy formation as an analytical process placing the business within the context of its industry.
4. The Entrepreneurial School views strategy formation as a visionary process, taking place solely within the mind of the leader.
5. The Cognitive School views strategy formation as a mental process, and analyzes how people perceive patterns and process information.
6. The Learning School views strategy formation as an emergent process of trial and error.
7. The Power School views strategy formation as a process of negotiation between power holders within the company.
8. The Cultural School views strategy formation as a collective process involving various groups and departments within the company.
9. The Environmental School views strategy formation as a reactive process, responding to the challenges imposed by the external environment.
10. The Configuration School views strategy formation as a process of transforming the organization from one type of decision-making structure into another.

The authors present the strengths and weaknesses of all ten schools, though they reveal and confess their favoritism toward the Learning School. Moreover, they assert the need to understand all ten schools. Just as the blind men feeling the elephant, no school of thought describes strategy in its entirety. Strategy Safari presents itself somewhere in between a textbook and a casual business book, enlightening yet entertaining to read. Overall, Strategy Safari is required reading for all strategic leaders.