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This quote from Scottish poet Robert Burns is especially applicable to strategy.
While we have been discussing strategy and strategizing as if they were the outcome
of a rational, predictable, analytical process, your own experience should tell you that
a fine plan does not guarantee a fine outcome. Many things can happen between the

development of the plan and its realization, including (but not limited to): (1) the plan
is poorly constructed, (2) competitors undermine the advantages envisioned by the
plan, or (3) the plan was good but poorly executed. You can probably imagine a
number of other factors that might undermine a strategic plan and the results that
follow.
How organizations make strategy has emerged as an area of intense debate
within the strategy field. Henry Mintzberg and his colleagues at McGill University
distinguish intended, deliberate, realized, and emergent strategies. These four
[1]
different aspects of strategy are summarized in the following
figure. Intended strategy is strategy as conceived by the top management team. Even
here, rationality is limited and the intended strategy is the result of a process of
negotiation, bargaining, and compromise, involving many individuals and groups
within the organization. However, realized strategy—the actual strategy that is
implemented—is only partly related to that which was intended (Mintzberg suggests
only 10%–30% of intended strategy is realized).

The primary determinant of realized strategy is what Mintzberg
terms emergent strategy—the decisions that emerge from the complex processes in
which individual managers interpret the intended strategy and adapt to changing
[2]
external circumstances. Thus, the realized strategy is a consequence
of deliberate and emerging factors. Analysis of Honda’s successful entry into the U.S.
motorcycle market has provided a battleground for the debate between those who
view strategy making as primarily a rational, analytical process of deliberate planning
(the design school) and those that envisage strategy as emerging from a complex
[3]
process of organizational decision making (the emergence or learning school).
[4]
Although the debate between the two schools continues, we hope that it is
apparent to you that the central issue is not “Which school is right?” but “How can

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