Building resilient food systems with emergent strategy
There are 4 simple lessons from emergent strategy that can help guide us towards building stronger, equity based food systems.
Understanding strategy was part of what drove me to business school. I wanted to understand how strategies were formed and executed and how that differed, if it did, from just doing the darn thing. I was extremely skeptical of the process of strategy development, as I had been part of organizations that invested time into creating strategy and then gave up on it the second there was a snag in implementation. On the flip side of the coin, I had also worked at places where each time the leadership team met, we were discussing yet another pivot and were utterly without a larger, guiding strategic vision, other than to make a profit. Having these experiences, I saw and continue to see the necessity of strategy in an organization, but I was not convinced on the process used for getting there.
Almost on the other side of an MBA, two years into my studies and a month away from graduating (!) I am reflecting. I work at a food hub in SE Portland. Previously, I have worked in community gardens, on urban farms, with micro-enterprise, and in community organizing to help transform our food systems. I am reflecting on how this work I and others have been doing in food systems, equity, and sovereignty pre-COVID-19 to now can both be guided by larger strategic visions, but also flexible and adaptable enough to respond to current needs.
STRATEGY MAKING AS A LEARNING PROCESS
Enter, emergent strategy. Academically speaking, emergent strategy can be said to develop with or without intention, but is strategy that emerges through a consistent pattern of actions by a person, team, or organization. This working definition comes from Henry Mintzberg’s research on the strategy formation process. What resonated with me in reading Mintzberg’s The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, was the emphasis on learning.
“We try things, and those experiments that work converge gradually into viable patterns that become strategies. This is the very essence of strategy making as a learning process.” (Mintzberg, p.)
PATTERN RECOGNITION
In addition to strategy making as a learning process, the above quote introduces the idea of recognizing patterns. The act of noticing what works and what doesn’t and learning from it. Another preeminent voice on emergent strategy, adrienne maree brown, notes in her book that a key tenant of emergent strategy is “Less prep, more presence.” This speaks to the work of self and organizational awareness to recognize patterns of action, success, and failure as key to the success of an emergent strategies.
RELATIONSHIPS & TRUST
When we are present, maybe even grounded in our own bodies, we can have a greater awareness of what is emerging, allowing a dialogue or a collaboration to form organically. Mintzberg also writes that collaboration is key to the success of strategy making;
“Managers with a commiting style engage people in a journey. They lead in such a way that everyone on the journey helps shape its course.”
For strategies to succeed, we need to prioritize and respect the expertise that each other holds through our own lived experiences. So, when I think about how we can build resilient and equitable food systems, I think of this guidance from amb, “[…] build resilience by building the relationships.”
BUILDING RESILIENT FOOD SYSTEMS
We want a relationship with our food. We want to be able to answer simple questions like, “Where did this food come from? How was it made? Who was involved?” When we can answer these questions about our food as consumers, producers, and coordinators, it is because we are in communication with each other. My own work and the work of many others in food systems is informed by a concept, Good Food (GF).
“In its ideal form, in order to qualify as GF a food chain should produce nutritious food in a manner that it is environmentally sustainable. Also, all actors in the supply chain should work to fair labour practices and all consumers, even those in lower income groups, should have access to the products.” (Kalfagianni)
With the concept of GF in mind, this is how I believe emergent strategy gives us the tools to build resilient and equitable food systems:
- Hold a larger vision or goal. We (un)consciously recreate systems of oppression, so centering equity is an excellent example of a larger goal.
- Have a learner’s mindset. Allow strategy to be informed by your own process of learning.
- Look for patterns. How do you/your team/your organization often take action, succeed or fail? Is there a pattern?
- Prioritize relationships. None of us hold all of the knowledge and we each offer unique perspectives. Seek that out in one another and in people outside of your own network, to the communities you wish to work in partnership with.
REFERENCES
Ana Moragues-Faus (2018) A critical perspective on the transformative capacity of food justice, Local Environment, 23:11, 1094–1097, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2018.1532400
Brown, Adrienne M. Emergent Strategy : Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press, 2017.
Kalfagianni, A. (Ed.), Skordili, S. (Ed.). (2019). Localizing Global Food. London: Routledge, https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.4324/9780429449284
Mintzberg, H. “Of Strategies, Deliberate and Emergent.” Strategic Management Journal., vol. 6, no. 3, 1985, pp. 257–272.
Mintzberg, H. “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning.” Harvard Business Review., vol. 72, no. 1, 1994, pp. 107–114.
