The Art of Strategic Agility: Balancing Deliberate and Emergent Strategies
Issue 201, February 27, 2025
We are addressing a thorny issue that all too often trips up even the best strategic planning. We often commit to a road and plan that ensures that all decisions are deliberate to keep us on that particular pathway. We plot, plan and rarely deviate.
Setting a deliberate path ahead has its benefits; it provides a clear vision, shared purpose and certainty and confirms market orientation. What else could anyone ask for? Clarity and optimism abound when you think you’ve got it all figured out. However, there are times when we and our organizations become so committed to deliberate strategy and anticipated results that we fail to see emergent strategies that may produce more fruitful outcomes.
The Path Not Taken
Time, in today’s terms, is not on our side. The speed of change has accelerated, and it’s hard to keep up with and discern meaning from kneejerk change. However, the other more consequential impact of change is when we become so wedded to the deliberate strategies that we fail to see opportunities or even different perspectives that could lead to greater success. The temptation to wear blinders and stick to our plans, no matter what, is a shortcoming in leadership vision and authentic, agile strategic planning.
Business management, like life, is not a linear path. We are constantly experiencing changes, small and big, that can upend a set path. Our deliberate strategies can become liabilities rather than assets. The challenge is recognizing when we have ignored a path not taken and course correct.
The Paradox of Deliberate Pathways
Consider this personal experience. A kid in elementary school becomes enamored with becoming a farmer. In high school, she decides becoming a scientist might be a better way to spend a working life. In college, she declared a major in computer science and her prior two goals are completely upended. In the process of growing up and her educational experiences, she was tracked into a major that was practical and potentially lucrative. She realizes, now, 15 years later with a more lucid perspective, she is stuck in a career trajectory that isn’t her passion.
She is very successful in her job and is making good money and supporting a family. But in those bleak hours of the early morning, she admits to herself that she is never quite satisfied or fulfilled. Along her life pathway there were different forks in the road that presented themselves, but they seemed too risky, too scary. She ignored them and played it safe with a deliberate plan that would guarantee financial stability.
Her situation is not unique. Many young people follow a deliberate plan and wake up 40 years later unfulfilled and unhappy. We are optimists, and we don’t present this scenario as a fatalistic outcome. We are using it as a cautionary tale to be aware of the habitual behaviors that impact us individually but also impact organizations.
Forks in the road typically run against the grain of our very deliberate strategies and plans to defer to security and stability. These emergent alternatives often do not fit into the boxes we have built for ourselves. Likewise, organizations run afoul for the same reasons, including wearing blinders or noise-suppressing earbuds to ensure few distractions or disruptions.
Understanding Emergent Strategies
The concept of emergent strategies, first introduced by Henry Mintzberg, a Canadian academic and management thinker, represents patterns or consistencies that develop despite, or in the absence of, deliberate planning. Clayton Christensen (deceased), professor at Harvard Business School and a highly influential thinker in management, strategy, and innovation and known for his work on disruptive innovation theory, further discussed and defined emergent strategy as a flexible, adaptive approach to business strategy that evolves based on real-world learning rather than rigid planning. He first related the concept to business and business theory, but later in life via his writings, he related emergent strategy to individuals and how they could leverage the strategy and practice to have more fulfilling lives.
Emergent strategy requires a process of identifying and capitalizing on unexpected opportunities, agility to adapt to changing environments, and refinement of a strategic direction based on experience and market feedback. “Emergent strategy is what happens when people start executing a strategy—but then discover they need to adapt because the world is different than they expected.” according to Christensen. The concept emphasizes learning, experimentation, and responsiveness, making it particularly valuable in dynamic and uncertain situations, as we are in current times.
Unlike deliberate strategies that move from thought to action, emergent strategies arise from action to the pattern. They often emerge from the ground up, through daily decisions and responses to unexpected challenges or opportunities. What matters most in some regards are the strategic premises an organization, or even an individual formulates.
Consider Netflix’s evolution from a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming giant and now a leading content creator. While the company’s initial deliberate strategy focused on disrupting traditional video rental, its emergence as a content production powerhouse evolved through responding to viewing patterns, data insights, and market opportunities. This transformation wasn’t part of the original business plan but emerged through attentive observation and strategic responsiveness.
Enlightened Strategic Planning
Strategy is important to keep organizations pointed in a collective direction. At 2040, we have noticed that many organizations have become lazy, so insular and uncurious that they default to deliberate plans as a kneejerk reaction to the frenetic, confusing onslaught of change around them. And to complicate unpredictable marketplace conditions, customers and clients are equally confused. The current contradictory federal orders and executive memos cascading into our inboxes make strategic planning seem quaint. With so much disorder, many organizations are stuck in a revolving door, heads down, trying to figure out a sustainable plan and path forward.
Here’s another example that you may relate to. Retailers are in panic mode scrambling to figure out how to manage possible tariffs. Their deliberate supply chain strategies are threatened by the domino effect of leaving stores with limited inventory or products that have escalating prices. Outside of tariffs, think of eggs in the throes of an emerging Bird Flu pandemic. The more effective approach is to rethink and overhaul the supply chain to mitigate unexpected changes. In a recent news story, a creative business leader in New York City purchased a large quantity of eggs from Turkey as a creative way to challenge current supply chain thinking. To the points we stressed last week, whether individuals and companies believe it or not, the world is highly interconnected, and options abound.
Identifying Emergent Opportunities: A Systematic Approach
Organizations need structured approaches to spot and evaluate emergent opportunities while maintaining the flexibility to act on them. Here’s a high-level framework:
Pattern Recognition
Organizations must develop systematic ways to identify patterns that might signal emergent opportunities. We have often surfaced the importance of pattern recognition in decision-making, aligning work processes and also in determining market opportunity. Setting strategy is no different.
Customer Behavior Analysis
Implement systems to track and analyze unexpected ways customers use products or services. For example, Slack’s evolution from a gaming company’s internal communication tool to a global enterprise platform came from recognizing patterns in how teams naturally collaborate.
Data Analytics
Deploy advanced analytics to identify anomalies and trends that don’t fit existing strategic frameworks. This includes analyzing social media conversations, customer service interactions, and sales patterns. One of the early benefits of AI is its ability to digest data and aid in pattern recognition.
Cross-Industry Monitoring
Track developments in adjacent industries that might signal new opportunities or threats. Tesla’s success partly came from applying tech industry principles to automotive manufacturing.
How to Detect Weak Signals
Organizations must become adept at detecting early indicators of change.
Establish networks of employees specifically tasked with monitoring emerging trends and technologies in their areas of expertise.
Create formal structures to gather insights from very engaged customers who often encounter new needs before the broader market.
Form alliances with startups, research institutions, and other organizations that can provide early access to emerging technologies and market trends.
From Recognition to Action to Strategy
Identifying opportunities is only the first step. Organizations need systematic approaches to validate and act on emergent opportunities. Three of the most important elements are openness and permission to experiment, creating a culture of cross-collaboration, where all parts of the workforce are encouraged to listen for weak signals and share their findings with others and breaking away from linear strategic planning to embrace systems and strategic thinking.
Experimentation
Rapid experimentation processes in an agile environment may allow an organization to vet the emergent opportunity. Similar to our counsel on how to manage innovation, experimentation shouldn’t be buried or hidden in one area of the organization, key personnel from across the organization should be brought together to discuss and vet the emergent opportunities.
Culture
Culture is often the determining factor in an organization’s ability to capitalize on emergent opportunities. A culture must be structured for psychological safety where ideas are respected, employees are listened to have the ability to offer criticism without retaliation. Establishing cross-functional collaboration should be both formal and informal and seeks to ensure consideration of broader market dynamics and perspectives.
Embracing Systems and Strategic Thinking
Traditional strategic planning assumes a linear, cause-and-effect approach, but real-world markets are not linear and are not predictable. Embracing systems thinking to understand complex interdependencies and how these interdependencies influence each other allows a collaborative workforce to identify how and where their strategies may need to adapt or change. Systems thinking also encourages continuous sensing and responding (identifying weak signals).
We bridged systems and strategic thinking together in a past issue of this newsletter. Take a few moments to jump back to the past and read the issue.
The Future of Strategic Thinking
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to balance deliberate and emergent strategies is crucial for long-term success. Organizations must build the capabilities to execute planned strategies while remaining alert and responsive to unexpected opportunities and challenges.
The future belongs to organizations that can maintain strategic direction while embracing emergence. This requires new approaches to leadership, organization design, and culture. Leaders must cultivate environments where deliberate and emergent strategies can coexist and reinforce each other.
The key is not choosing between deliberate and emergent strategies but creating systems and cultures that can effectively leverage both. Organizations that master this balance will be best positioned to thrive in an increasingly uncertain and rapidly changing business environment.
Strategic Agility
Strategic agility is no longer a luxury but a necessity for organizational survival and success. By building the capabilities to identify and act on emergent opportunities while maintaining strategic focus, organizations can create sustainable competitive advantages in an increasingly uncertain world.
The challenge for leaders is to create organizations that can execute today while preparing for tomorrow. This requires new approaches to strategy, organization, and leadership that embrace both deliberate planning and emergent opportunity. The future belongs to those who can master this balance.
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