Recently Ethiopia has been engaged in a huge expansion of its higher education institutions. This was also accompanied by a series of institutional management reforms and quality assurance regulations. Accordingly, the organizational environment in the public universities of Ethiopia has been changing from time to time. In such a context, the key to better align these academic institutions with the needs of their rapidly changing internal and external environments is the design of appropriate strategic plans and effective implementation of their preferred strategies. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate the practice of strategic planning and strategy implementation in public universities of Ethiopia. Data were collected through questionnaires from staff members (from both academic and administrative) and students; and through interviews from the management team members (Vice Presidents and Directors) of three selected public universities. The results of this study showed that in the sampled public universities: stakeholders' participation in the process of strategic planning was found to be low; less emphasis was given to critically assessing their ever changing external environment while planning; the practice of clearly communicating their preferred strategies and activities to both academic and administrative staff was found to be minimal and ineffective; there was also lack of adequate monitoring, follow up and feedback systems; moreover, major decisions were made without aligning them with the university's preferred areas of priority and major objectives as stipulated in the strategic plan document.