Emergent Strategy

Some would say that to have an effective emergent strategy there still needs to be a strong strategic plan in place with a focused goals and accountability for results. Thinking on though, as changes to initial conditions occur, the initial conditions on which a ‘plan’ was built, some firms cannot adequately plan or are not prepared to make changes to their plans to cope with new direction, learnings or the significant changes to an organisation that sometimes needs to happen. Sometimes, that wilful blindness that Margaret Heffernan so eloquently articulates comes into play. The inability of some companies to plan properly for it, speeds up the damage it can do to organizational structure, financial outcomes, morale and careers. We think we know an awful lot about the outcomes of change programmes, getting the method right and the leadership etcetera, as if we are simply building a pretty cause and effect jigsaw from eight step models. However, as Strebel notes: ‘change leaders cannot afford the risk of blindly applying standard change recipes and hoping it will work.’ Almost all of the time we are playing catch up, most change initiatives don’t work, most planned strategies fail and we will simply never know how many world changing ideas have been snubbed out before they moved beyond the first words. Change like planned strategy has lost 25% of its value before you’ve driven out of the Executive Summary showroom. We have an awful lot of knowledge about knowledge and the change capability it requires. We know a great deal about human psychology and sociology but we seldom put all of this together with fresh eyes; inside our organisations or in the world at large.

However, some see emergent strategy as more closely aligned with the lived nature of the business, with the ability of people to work together to sense-make in a complex world; creating the capacity for change in the midst of both human and economic complexity. It’s ‘just-in-time learning,’ allowing the right teams to form to investigate given issues and opportunities and formulate solutions and actions. It’s about learning and context. This is very different to the established status quo. In business terms, what this suggests is that in many industry contexts, strict clear cut hierarchical top down management is not equipped to deal with knowledge rich and complex environments. Emergent strategy can be seen as a strategy that emerges over time, where circumstance and opportunity, intentions and ideas collide in a complex environment. These are captured and analysed by systems and by social mechanisms. Emergent strategy is therefore a set of actions or behaviours; knowledge capture and analysis, indeed, the captured capacity to be change and think on the hoof, it is by its very nature lived in learning organisations. Rather than a structured plan of action, it’s a structured set of capacities; it’s the great sail-builders and riggers, the navigator and the tiller. It’s the capacity of the organisation to path-find, wave ride with the Stars like the great Tahitian Polynesian navigator Tupaia. Henry Mintzberg said: ‘The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting the subtle discontinuities that may undermine a business in the future. And for that, there is no technique, no program, just a sharp mind in touch with the situation.’ His words are as true of the need to develop change, capture the objects of R&D and build a knowledge rich environment. However, programmes such as Google’s 20% project time, itself borrowed from 3M create enormous benefits in just such an emergent fashion. Indeed, Gmail is a product of such an approach. Again within this notion of emergent strategy it is clear that developing strategy or the capacity to deal with emergent opportunity is characterised by constant engagement with change to greater or lesser degree. Leadership of this type of strategy is about encouraging distributed leadership or in other languages: empowered staff; a community of leaders, those who are not frightened to work on ideas as a community of curiosity. Leaders need to be facilitators of Ba, the space for strategic conversations; they need to ensure effective communication and the right mental and physical environment for change and ideas to flourish. In this context leaders need to give individuals the confidence to step into the identity that best serves in a given context.

‘Effective organizations are communities of engaged human beings, not collections of passive human resources.’ - Henry Mintzberg.

These leaders must also adhere to the belief that language does not mirror reality; rather it constitutes it and in as much they must make sure language is consistent and reflects perspectives and cultural attributes clearly, language, the words, statements and stories that filter through constitute culture and identity. Shared language is the medium by which the negotiation and construction of meaning takes place. This is where the leader must shape and monitor the course of action and communication while at the same time allowing events to take their own form. Great leaders and communities of great leaders, to deal with emergent strategy, must develop emotional intelligence and a grasp of psychology that gives insight in action and reason. The happy corollary of this is that when we bring together the characteristics of emotional intelligence and look at the skills of resilience it is clear that the two are interwoven. The positive outlook in itself, is enough to contribute to greater insight through the positive mental outlooks bestowed on positive minds and physiologies and the interpersonal engagement that is fostered between communities of teams and leaders working hand in hand to create the future of the organisation.