"Discovery beats planning"

"Turns out, that is how most strategies emerge: Discovery beats planning.
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For more evidence, go back and look at the strategic plan from years ago at your favorite successful company. There is a good chance that the company’s winning strategy won’t appear in that old plan.
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So how do we deal with the fact that discovery beats planning?
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A better reaction is to lead your organization through the process of discovery. After all, there is information in those unanticipated consequences for those who know to seek it out.
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Seen this way, the strategic plan is just the start of the discovery process. This process happens differently at different companies - and often happens unintentionally. But research on how companies evolve has revealed two key steps in the discovery process that are worth highlighting.
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Step 1: Failed Execution
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It may surprise you that the discovery process often starts with failed execution. But think it through. When execution of a strategy goes smoothly, we simply enjoy the success. It often requires failure for companies and their leaders to stop and reconsider their strategy.
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In fact, rather than think in terms of "strategy execution", many prefer instead to describe the process as a hypothesis test.
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Seen this way, a company's strategy is a theory - one that develops over time as the organization and its leaders learn. Taking this approach, the execution of strategy is really just a test of the strategy's logic. Our strategy guides and coordinates, but in the process it allows us to treat the underlying logic as a hypothesis to be tested. So it is that you will hear people advise you to "fail fast and cheap." They don't really want you to fail; they want you to learn - to develop your strategy during the process of execution.
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Step 2: Diagnosis and Learning
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Learning from failure is difficult. It requires considerable effort by leadership to correctly diagnose, to interpret and make sense of what has happened. Sometimes in the process leadership may even discover possibilities they might otherwise not have imagined. But this learning process is fraught with difficulties."

Trechos retirados de "Discovery Beats Planning, so Plan to Discover"