Emergent Strategy: Building Organizations That Learn, Adapt, and Last

You don’t have to spend a lot of time in recent news to identify the latest instance of when rigid strategies fall apart. Only organizations that learn, adapt, and move together survive — and thrive.  

Adaptability = Survival 

Across history, the groups that endured weren’t the strongest — they were the fastest learners. 

• Anthropology shows that early human societies used shared rituals and storytelling to manage collective anxiety and coordinate action during times of uncertainty. (Boyer, P & Liénard, P. 2006) 

• Anthropology research shows that shared rituals around uncertainty helped early human tribes survive, bond, and innovate under extreme unpredictability. (Turner, 1969; Rappaport, 1999) 

• In teams today, emotional regulation + shared purpose still transform fear into coordinated action. (Edmondson. 2018. The Fearless Organization) 

Culture Is the Soil for Strategy 

You can’t command adaptability — you must grow it. 

• Purpose = Nutrients 

• Continual Learning = Water 

• Collective Intelligence = Sunlight 

Without healthy cultural soil, no strategy can take root. (Weick, KE. 1995. Sensemaking in Organizations) 

AI: Apprentice, Not Master 

Generative AI is powerful — but it’s not the strategist. It’s the apprentice, not the architect. 

The human edge remains: 

• Judgment 

• Empathy 

• Creativity 

• Purpose-driven sensemaking 

Treat AI like a talented assistant — not your organization's conscience (De Cremer D & Narayanan D. 2023).  

Strategy Reviews = Organizational Heartbeats 

Think of regular strategic reviews like heartbeats: 

• Rhythmic 

• Life-sustaining 

• Adaptive to new realities 

No regular review? Organizational cardiac arrest. (Ryder, M. 2024) 

Leverage Collective Intelligence 

Teams outperform lone heroes (Moshman, D & Geil, M. 1998; Woolley, AW et al. 2010). Evidence shows: 

• Shared mental models predict team performance. (Edwards et al. 2006)  

• Strategic core roles anchor high team impact. (Humphrey et al. 2009) 

• Team adaptability outweighs individual IQ (Brannick & Prince, 1997; Ficapal-Cusí et al., 2021) 

The smartest organization is the one that learns together. 

The Power of Emergent Strategy 

Emergent strategy isn't chaos — it's disciplined adaptability. Research confirms: 

• Emergent strategies manage radical innovation better than rigid, planned approaches. (McDermott & O'Connor, 2002) 

• Performance improves when teams measure success adaptively at the micro-level. (Lowe & Jones, 2004) 

• Adaptive strategy-making leads to better resilience and performance than purely intended strategies. (Andersen & Nielsen, 2009) 

Emergent strategy is not abandoning control — it’s shifting from prediction to participation. 

Build-Buy-Borrow-Bot Framework 

To adapt, you must smartly invest in capabilities (which are individual skills, knowledge, mindset, and attitudes brought together to deliver collective results): 

• Build ➔ Develop internal expertise 

• Buy ➔ Acquire strategic assets 

• Borrow ➔ Bring in partners and gig expertise 

• Bot ➔ Automate scalable, repeatable tasks 

The right mix evolves — just like your strategy must. 

Emergent Strategy = Jazz, Not Symphony 

Forget rigid orchestras. Emergent strategy is jazz: 

• Shared theme (purpose) 

• Real-time improvisation (learning) 

• Deep listening (collaboration) 

The organizations that improvise beautifully together will own the future.  

Key Takeaway: Your strategy shouldn't predict the future. It should help you adapt faster when the future refuses to behave.  

Join the Conversation: 

How does your organization cultivate adaptability? 
Is your culture rigid like stone — or alive like jazz? 
Share your thoughts below!  

Works Cited: 

• Andersen, TJ & Nielsen, BB. 2009. Adaptive strategy making: The effects of emergent and intended strategy modes. European Management Review 6.2.94-106. 

• Boyer P & Liénard P. 2006. “Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals.” Behavior and Brain Sciences 29.6.595-613. 

• Brannick, MT, Salas, E & Prince, CW eds. 1997. Team performance assessment and measurement: Theory, methods, and applications. Psychology Press.  

• De Cremer D & Narayanan D. 2023. How AI tools can-and cannot-help organizations become more ethical. Frontiers of Artificial Intelligence 6.1093712.  

• Edmondson, AC. 2018. The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons. 

• Edwards, BD, Day, EA, Arthur Jr, W & Bell, ST. 2006. Relationships among team ability composition, team mental models, and team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology 91.3.727. 

• Ficapal-Cusí, P, Enache-Zegheru, M & Torrent-Sellens, J. 2021. Enhancing team performance: A multilevel model. Journal of Cleaner Production 289.125158. 

• Humphrey SE, Morgeson FP & Mannor MJ. 2009. Developing a theory of the strategic core of teams: A role composition model of team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology 94.1.48.   

• Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan. 

• Liénard, P & Boyer, P. 2006. Whence collective rituals? A cultural selection model of ritualized behavior. American Anthropologist 108.4.814-27. 

• Lowe, A & Jones, A. 2004. Emergent strategy and the measurement of performance: The formulation of performance indicators at the microlevel. Organization Studies 25.8.1313-37. 

• March, JG. 1991. Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization science 2.1.71-87. 

• McDermott, CM & O'connor, GC. 2002. Managing radical innovation: an overview of emergent strategy issues. Journal of Product Innovation Management: an international publication of the product development & management association 19.6.424-38. 

• Monosov, IE. 2020. How outcome uncertainty mediates attention, learning, and decision-making. Trends in Neurosciences 43.10.795-809. 

• Moshman, D & Geil, M. 1998. Collaborative reasoning: Evidence for collective rationality. Thinking and Reasoning 4.3.231-48.  

• Nicholas, J, Daw, ND & Shohamy, D. 2022. Uncertainty alters the balance between incremental learning and episodic memory. Elife 11.e81679. 

• Preuschoff, K, Mohr, PN & Hsu, M. 2013. Decision making under uncertainty. Frontiers in Neuroscience 7.218. 

• Rappaport, RA. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Vol. 110). Cambridge University Press. 

• Ryder, M. 2024. Using OODA Loops to Build Sustainable Practice into Business Education. In: Wall, T, Viera Trevisan, L, Leal Filho, W, & Shore, A. eds. Sustainability in Business Education, Research and Practices. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. 

• Senge, PM. 1997. The fifth discipline. The art and practice of the learning organization.  

• Turner, V, Abrahams, R & Harris, A. 2017. The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Routledge. 

• Taleb, NN. 2014. Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Random House.  

• Weick, KE. 1995. Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications. 

• Woolley, AW, Chabris, CF, Pentland, A, Hashmi, N & Malone, TW. 2010. Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science 330.6004.686-88.  

• Aristotle’s Ethics — Emotional Regulation and Habit 

Want to be part of the (r)evolution?  

I am putting the finishing touches on the first draft of a book with a friend and colleague Andrew Lopianowski on the concept, which we are calling HumanCorps. If you’d like to learn more about the book, or perhaps have some amazing stories of people who are putting these efforts in motion to be the change we need, please drop me a line.