Emergent strategy
Emergent strategy is the pattern that forms in what an organisation does as it acts and learns. Henry Mintzberg named it, and the Emergent Approach turns it into a way of working.
What emergent strategy means
Henry Mintzberg defined strategy as a pattern in a stream of decisions. Look back over what an organisation actually did and a pattern shows. Some of it was planned. Much of it formed along the way, as people responded to customers, competitors and their own results.
Mintzberg called the planned part deliberate strategy and the part that formed along the way emergent strategy. The strategy an organisation ends up with, its realised strategy, is a mix of the two. Some of what was intended never happens at all, and Mintzberg called that unrealised strategy.
Deliberate and emergent strategy
In "Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent" (1985), Mintzberg and James Waters treated the two as the ends of a line. A purely deliberate strategy needs precise intentions, shared by everyone and carried out exactly as planned, in a world that holds still while you do it. A purely emergent strategy needs consistent action with no intention behind it. Real strategies sit somewhere between the ends.
- Deliberate strategy starts from intent. Leaders decide where to go and how, and the organisation carries it out.
- Emergent strategy starts from action. Teams try things, see what works, and the pattern in what works becomes the strategy.
The useful question is how much of each a situation calls for. A utility building a power station needs a long deliberate plan. A business entering a market it does not yet understand has to learn its way in.
An example
The best-known example is Honda's arrival in the United States motorcycle market in 1959. The company planned to sell large motorcycles, and they struggled. The small Supercub bikes the Honda team rode around Los Angeles drew interest from riders and retailers, Honda followed that interest, and the small bikes became its way into the market. Richard Pascale's 1984 account of the story is still taught as the textbook case of a strategy that emerged.
Why plans drift from reality
Most strategic planning still assumes the deliberate end of the line: write a five-year plan and review it once a year. In The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994), Mintzberg argued that formal planning is good at programming a strategy an organisation already has and poor at creating one. Conditions change faster than the annual cycle, so teams work around the plan, and the strategy that matters forms in those workarounds where nobody can see it.
Managing emergent strategy
Emergent strategy still needs managing. Mintzberg described umbrella strategies, where leaders set a broad direction and boundaries and let the detail form inside them. The work is to notice the patterns that form, keep the ones that work and stop the ones that fail. That takes a strategy written down clearly enough to compare with what is happening.
The Emergent Approach
Peter Compo's book The Emergent Approach to Strategy builds on Mintzberg's work and on the science of complex adaptive systems. It gives teams a structure for a strategy that is expected to change: an aspiration, a diagnosis of what is in the way, strategy alternatives tested against the same criteria, and a strategy chosen from them that the team keeps testing as it learns.
Wayframer is built on the Emergent Approach. Each strategy framework keeps its values, aspiration, diagnosis and alternatives in one workspace, so when conditions change the team can see which part of the reasoning changed and work the strategy forward from there. Read how the method works.
A note on the name
adrienne maree brown's 2017 book Emergent Strategy uses the same words for a different subject: how social movements and communities organise and change. This page is about emergent strategy in management, the idea Henry Mintzberg introduced.
Related guides
The Emergent Approach. The method Wayframer is built on, and the research behind it.
The strategic planning process. Seven steps from a goal to a strategy the team can test and keep using.
Strategic diagnosis. Say plainly what is in the way, and find the bottleneck that matters most.
Questions
Who came up with emergent strategy?
Henry Mintzberg, the Canadian management scholar, first described it in "Patterns in Strategy Formation" (1978) and set it out with James Waters in "Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent" (1985).
What is the difference between deliberate and emergent strategy?
Deliberate strategy is intended in advance and carried out as planned. Emergent strategy forms from what an organisation does as it learns, with no plan behind it at the start. Most realised strategies combine the two.
Is emergent strategy better than deliberate strategy?
Each suits different conditions. Stable, predictable situations reward deliberate plans, and uncertain ones reward learning as you go. Most organisations need a deliberate direction with room for strategy to emerge inside it.
Can you plan for emergent strategy?
Yes. Set a clear aspiration and the boundaries of what you will and will not do, write down the strategy you are testing, and review it against what happens. Patterns that work are then adopted into the deliberate strategy.