Critical – The Difference between Strategies and Tactics
Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes
HAPPY NEW YEAR! The party is over and we are back at the office confronted by 2011.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” From The Art of War by Sun Tzu
This is the eighth post in the series on Strategic Planning. Note that you can subscribe to the blog postings by completing the form in the “Subscribe Free” tab. Or, you can link with an RSS feed.
First, let’s make sure we have the lingo of strategic planning in place. Many people…including company leaders…get strategies and tactics mixed up. Long term, this confusion can be like a fatal self-inflicted wound. I have actually been in a board meeting where tactics were presented as strategies! The scary thing was that no board members challenged the presenter. You may have experienced leaders that rattle off a lot of tasks the team needs to do. If the tasks don’t have a common thread, then they are probably unrelated tactics. The team chases after the tasks without any clear feeling of direction (strategy). Resources get spread out. The team becomes “busy fools”. Financial results are flat. And, don’t confuse operational effectiveness with sound strategic practice.
“There’s a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness. “ Michael Porter
Let’s go over the lingo:
Key Goals – in the last post we discussed setting your Key Goals for the year. And, we talked about the need for goals to be as quantitative as possible. It is not unusual for goals and strategies to sound similar. A good way to keep this straight is to remember that the result of the implementation of a strategy will be the achievement of a goal.
Key Strategies – these are the 5 or 6 strategies that MUST be executed in order to achieve the Key Goals. A strategy is an overall descriptor of the direction a company will take in a specific area of effort over a period of time. In our case, the strategies are for one year. However, if successful, they could be continued. Many business gurus say that the strategy is “what” we are going to do to achieve a goal.
Still scratching your head? That’s OK. Hang in there. Let’s talk about Tactics and then use an example.
Tactics – tactics are “how” the strategy will be executed. They are much like tasks. Several tactics and sub-tactics may be required to carry out a strategy. For example:
New Years Resolution Goal – Lose 10 pounds in 4 months. (quantitative)
- One strategy could be – Follow a healthy diet. (overall descriptor of an effort to achieve the goal)
- The tactics that support this strategy would be:
- Buy a healthy diet cookbook
- Add a calorie counter app to my iPhone
- Make a meal plan for every day that limits daily consumption to 2,000 calories or less
- Log my caloric intake after every meal
- Take blinders to the store and use them to walk through the candy aisle
- Wear a nose clamp when in the bakery so you are not tempted by the wonderful smells of donuts, cakes and cookies
- Always use the “non-candy” cashier aisle – for my international readers…this is true…we have non-candy cashier stations so children that are accompanying their parents while grocery shopping are not tempted by candy and gum
- The tactics that support this strategy would be:
See how the strategy gives an overall direction for an area of effort – “Follow a healthy diet”. The tactics are very specific steps toward following the diet. “Buy a healthy diet cookbook” is not a strategy. It is a tactic that supports the strategy.
There is a nuance here that can be confusing. Some would say that “Follow a healthy diet” is “how” you are going to achieve the goal of losing 10 pounds. Doesn’t that make it a tactic? No. Remember, it is the descriptor of an overall direction that will be taken. It is one of the “whats” that you will do. It does not have the specifics of how the health diet will be accomplished. You could follow an entirely different direction or strategy to achieve this goal. Your strategy could be to exercise more regularly. Of course, with a goal of losing 10 pounds, you will probably want to follow both strategies.
In the next post we will create some strategies and tasks that are more medical device related.
