Mintzberg saw the managers as the craftsman and the strategy as his clay crafting summed up strategy as a process. He believed that the strategy is deductive not inductive and that strategist recognised patterns, didn’t plan them. He perceived that planning actually distorts and misguides strategy. The idea is that strategy is what’s happening already and that it’s what the frontline players are doing to make things work the best. If we don’t know what our strategy is then we have to look at what themes keep making decisions for us. Mintzberg believed that the strategy explained past actions and the intended behaviour. To discover a company strategy, we can look at the interplay of the environment and the leadership and the organisation of the company. There’s a critical link between action and thought. Action leads to change and innovations and this then leads to strategy. The problem comes when there are many layers between the doers and the decision makers.
Mintzberg states that strategy has two feet: deliberate and emergent. Learning has to work with control. Strategy makes stability because if there’s no stability, there can be no strategy. The cycle stages flow like this: evolutionary change goes on and then revolutionary turmoil changes things and then the stability returns. If there is not enough time between these stages then strategy has failed. Mintzberg also talked about weeds. Strategist need to know when to yank bad ones out and when to leave novel ones in the corner of the garden, so that they can take over when the turmoil hits and they blossom.

He did not believe in executive strategist. Instead he believed in the personal touch of the managers and sees them as craftsmen. The whole purpose is to manage the stability of the strategy not change. Notice the trends before they hit and modify the business to deal with it.