"The assumptions about human knowledge underlying the ideal of the perfect plan have proven to be more stubborn. They were given a jolt by the oil price shocks of the 1970s, when the world revealed itself to be less stable than everyone had thought. They provided clear evidence that planners could not know everything they needed to know, and that the business environment had an element of unpredictability. Ironically, it was just at that time that Taylorian principles were extending themselves well beyond routine tasks into strategic planning and control systems.7 Strategic planning rose and fell. Its hubris was perfect knowledge, its fatal flaw the increasing rate of unpredictable changes in the environment. Between inception and execution, every plan could be derailed by something unexpected, and most plans were. So what was the point of planning? Surely a company needs some sort of direction? In 1994, the nemesis of strategic planners, Henry Mintzberg, could write that "we are now ready to extract the planning baby from all that strategic planning bathwater."8 So we have ditched the bathwater in Taylor's assumptions about human behavior and human knowledge. We are left with two babies: the understanding that people can indeed regulate themselves if they are committed to some objectives; and the understanding that objectives do need to be set in some way or other."