Strategy making is considered the high point of managerial activity. But bombarded by fads and fixes, most managers have been groping blindly to get their arms around the proverbial elephant. Now Henry Mintzberg has teamed up with Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph Lampel to create a powerful antidote: a comprehensive and illuminating - as well as colorful - tour through the fields of strategic management.

Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel have shaped each of ten different approaches into a coherent school of strategy formation. In the process, the authors clarify the enormous amount of confusion that exists.

The authors provide a thorough critique of the contributions and limitations of each school - from the design, planning, positioning, entrepreneurial, and cognitive schools to the learning, power, cultural, environmental, and configurational schools - culminating in how they might combine to reveal that elephant.