This paper examines the approach of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to institutional strategy and planning, set out in 2000 in "Strategic Planning in Higher Education: A Guide for Heads of Institutions, Senior Managers and Members of Governing Bodies" ("the Guide"). It considers the general lack of clearly identified and prioritized missions amongst higher education institutions (HEIs), something partly caused by HEFCE's own strategy, and how this may cause difficulty in the operation of HEFCE's strategic planning model. It goes on to suggest that the HEFCE approach, being generally over-simplistic and failing to take account of the complexity of the processes whereby strategy is really developed, is unlikely to produce a clear strategic framework against which effective decision-making will take place throughout an institution.