Good Essay On Adaptive Strategy

Question 1

A deliberate strategy is one that’s main purpose is to lay out a plan and then execute. The metric of success is the number of tasks accomplished; thus the strategy’s main focus is on direction, control, and accomplishment. An emergent strategy is more strategic. This strategy is focused on lessons learned and then making the process better. The idea behind emergent strategy is that the whole process is inherently a dynamic and learning process. The advantages of emergent strategies are that they improve upon previous procedures and policy. The company or organization that adopts these emergent strategies have no choice but to improve thus become more efficient at what they do. Emergent strategies are good in organizations that have procedures that can easily quantified so that the organization can improve upon these procedures. It would be difficult to improve upon the way of doing business without an objective measure. These strategies would do well in competitive environments because it allows the organization to not only look at their own practices, but to also look at the practices of competitors. The organization could take the best practices and apply them to their own organization. The problems that would be tackled are problems such as wasted time, inefficient work force, low profit, and debt. Question 2
Rosabeth Kanter’s uses a metaphor to describe the strategy. This metaphor is improvisational theater. It is used for flexible and emergent strategies. She uses the six elements of theaters, themes, audiences, suspense, actors, and successive versions. For all of these elements the basic premise is that innovation or emergent strategies are organic in nature. When managers, or in the case of Kanter, directors allow the actors free range to innovate, then the production as a whole becomes better. The managers can set the stage if you will for success by allow the actors to innovate on their own instead of being ordered by the director. This leads to successive versions of the same play. The play improves upon itself as more and more plays are created. Interestingly, a metric for success in this case is the audience as the audience drives the play. Therefore with the emergent activities, how much the audience likes the play is an indicator of innovation; if the audience liked it, it is likely innovation is occurring.

Works Cited

Boyd, Stowe. "Moving toward Emergent Strategy: Slowly, If at All." Gigaom Research. 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2015. <http://research.gigaom.com/2013/10/moving-toward-emergent-strategy-slowly-if-at-all/>.