Major Shifts in Management Thinking Over Twenty Years – Shift #2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1185

Major Shifts in Management Thinking Over Twenty Years – Shift #2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1185

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1185 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Andrea Piacquadio

Preamble

This series shall explore major shifts in management thinking and paradigm shifts over the last twenty years.

From Fixed Strategy and Execution to Agile and Adaptive Learning Organizations

For much of the 20th century, strategy was treated like architecture, something solid, detailed, and enduring. Senior executives gathered every few years to design a five-year plan, complete with market forecasts, production targets, and growth milestones. Once the blueprint was approved, execution teams were tasked with delivering it faithfully.

The system rewarded precision and predictability. Strategy was seen as a map; execution, the road to follow. Deviations were discouraged, and adaptability was often equated with disobedience.

But in the last 20 years, the ground beneath that model has shifted. The world has become too volatile, too interconnected, and too fast-moving for any plan, no matter how brilliant, to remain static. The pace of change now outstrips the pace of planning.

In this new reality, organizations have to evolve from fixed strategy and rigid execution to agile and adaptive learning systems, organizations that treat change not as disruption but as fuel for evolution.

The Age of Predictability Is Over

The traditional strategy model assumed a relatively stable environment. You could analyze market trends, forecast demand, and build a plan that would hold for several years. Success depended on how well you executed what you had planned.

But globalization, digitalization, and technological disruption have shattered that stability. The 2008 financial crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, AI revolution, and geopolitical uncertainties have shown that the future no longer unfolds linearly. Markets can change direction overnight. A startup can upend an industry in months.

As McKinsey famously noted, “Strategy is now a verb, not a noun.” It’s not something you make once; it’s something you continuously do.

Today’s winning organizations are those that can sense, respond, and adapt faster than their environment changes. They are not built for control; they are built for learning.

The Birth of Agile Thinking

The term agile originated in software development but quickly spread far beyond it. The Agile Manifesto (2001) rejected rigid project plans in favor of flexibility, collaboration, and customer feedback.

Soon, leaders in every industry realized that agility wasn’t just a method; it was a mindset, a way of organizing work around adaptation, iteration, and learning.

In an agile organization:

Strategy emerges through experimentation rather than prediction.

Teams work in short cycles, delivering quick results and learning from them.

Decision-making is distributed, not concentrated.

Feedback loops are constant, not annual.

This doesn’t mean abandoning long-term vision. It means combining a clear direction with flexible pathways, knowing where you want to go but being open to changing how you get there.

From Learning About to Learning From

One of the most profound changes in management thinking has been the redefinition of learning itself. Traditional organizations “learned about”: they conducted studies, benchmarked competitors, or commissioned consultants. The process was intellectual and detached.

Adaptive organizations, in contrast, learn from: they learn by doing, by testing, by failing, and by reflecting. They operate more like laboratories than factories. Each project, each campaign, each mistake becomes an opportunity for feedback and growth.

Google’s famous “launch and iterate” culture embodies this. So do Toyota’s “kaizen” principles and Amazon’s “Day 1” mentality. The assumption is simple but radical: no plan survives first contact with reality, so the best plan is one that evolves continuously.

Why Strategy Must Be Living, Not Static

Strategy in this new age is not a static document but a living conversation. It requires constant dialogue between vision and reality, between what we intend and what actually happens.

Modern leaders must ask:

What are we learning about our customers this week?

What assumptions need revisiting?

What did we test that didn’t work — and why?

What signals in the environment demand a response?

This shift from fixed to fluid strategy transforms the role of leadership itself. Instead of being the authors of the perfect plan, leaders become architects of adaptability. Their job is to build the organizational muscles that make continuous learning possible — curiosity, collaboration, and courage.

The Rise of Adaptive Learning Organizations

Peter Senge’s landmark concept of the learning organization, from The Fifth Discipline (1990), has gained renewed relevance. A learning organization is one “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire.”

In the 2020s, this vision has evolved into what management scholars now call adaptive learning organizations; entities that not only learn but also change in real time.

These organizations share several defining features:

Continuous Scanning of the Environment: They monitor technological, social, and market trends closely, using data analytics, AI, and direct stakeholder feedback to detect weak signals early.

Decentralized Decision-Making: They empower teams closest to the action to make decisions fast, reducing bureaucratic drag.

Safe-to-Fail Culture: Failure is treated as a learning input, not a career-ending event. The focus is on extracting insights quickly.

Open Knowledge Flows: Learning is democratized. Insights are shared laterally across functions and hierarchies to prevent siloed intelligence.

Leadership as Facilitation: Leaders serve as coaches and catalysts, not controllers. They shape purpose and culture, not just plans.

When organizations embody these principles, they become resilient ecosystems, capable not only of surviving turbulence, but of using it to innovate.

The Role of Data and Digital Tools

Digital technology has been the single greatest enabler of this shift. Artificial intelligence, big data, and predictive analytics have made it possible to test hypotheses rapidly, measure outcomes, and iterate continuously.

Consider how pharmaceutical R&D has evolved. Traditional drug discovery took decades; adaptive organizations now use AI-driven modeling, real-world data, and cross-institutional collaboration to shorten development cycles dramatically.

Similarly, in manufacturing, digital twins and real-time monitoring allow companies to adjust operations instantly based on live data. The organization becomes a self-correcting system — learning constantly from its own performance.

Pakistan’s Case for Adaptive Learning Organizations

In Pakistan, many companies, particularly in pharmaceuticals, banking, and public sector enterprises, still operate on fixed, top-down strategies designed for predictability rather than agility. Strategic planning cycles are long, and execution is rigidly monitored against static KPIs. But Pakistan’s economic, regulatory, and technological environments are anything but stable. Currency fluctuations, shifting trade policies, and rapid digital adoption demand adaptive management at every level.

To thrive in such volatility, Pakistani firms must:

Build cross-functional teams that can respond to change quickly.

Adopt data-driven decision-making that replaces intuition with insight.

Encourage learning loops — review, adapt, and reapply — as part of regular operations.

Redefine leadership development to emphasize agility, not authority.

The country’s burgeoning tech and startup ecosystem already demonstrates this spirit. Young entrepreneurs are experimenting fast, pivoting often, and creating new business models in e-commerce, healthtech, and fintech. Large traditional firms could learn much from this adaptive mindset.

From Execution to Exploration

This shift also redefines what “execution” means. In the past, execution was about delivering pre-defined results. Today, it’s about exploring possibilities; testing, iterating, and scaling what works.

Leaders must therefore balance two organizational modes:

Execution mode — optimizing current operations for efficiency.

Exploration mode — experimenting with new ideas for future growth.

Harvard’s Michael Tushman and Charles O’Reilly call this the ambidextrous organization; one that can exploit and explore simultaneously. Adaptive learning organizations master this duality by building flexibility into both strategy and structure.

Sum Up: The Future Belongs to the Learners

In a world that refuses to stand still, the only sustainable advantage is learning faster than everyone else. Fixed strategies crumble under uncertainty. Rigid execution stifles innovation. But organizations that learn dynamically, collectively, and courageously, become future-proof.

As Alvin Toffler once wrote, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” The last 20 years of management thinking have proven him right. The next 20 will prove it even more.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, any claim is lodged, it will be acknowledged and duly recognized immediately.