Strategic Thinking Series – “Tactical Thinking vs. Strategic
Rallying cries like “Time is money!”; “We need to executive! We need to respond faster!” and “First to market!” tend to trigger us into an exaggerated sense of urgency and massive action often without an overarching strategy. Our critical thinking turns out to be weak.
Having a stated strategy is actually the precursor to better decisions. “Tactics only” implies poor alignment. A robust strategy dictates what the aligned tactics will be. Work (with all its tactical demands) is exciting and rewarding when there is an end goal in mind. Offer up a vision that captures the minds and hearts of employees, and most people will waste no time “taking the hill” for their leader. So when you don’t have a vision, and all the work is based on moving forward from the last step that was taken, you aren’t likely to have teams who are excited about the amount of work they face.
We haven’t been taught to stop and anchor our goals. Tactics are the DO-ing part of an initiative; strategies are the BE-ing part. An end game that is “$5 million in sales” is a metric at best, not a strategy. “Sell $5 million” sounds like a goal, but it is a tactic. However, “we are best in class because $5 million was sold and we are awarding winning for our culture, our skills and our service” is a compelling desired state and it will dictate who follows in terms of action steps. When we move too fast, we leave out the substance that makes our tasks meaningful.
In business we talk about market share and being at the top of our industry. We strive to make our numbers, be first in our field, and to be regarded by our customers as the premier choice for world-class service. None of this spells out HOW we will get there; only that we know what getting there means to us. That is the sound of strategy and an anchored desired state.
The first step to learning how to be more strategic is to focus your mind on the difference between be-ing and do-ing. In order to avoid swimming in circles, we ideally want to have a vision, a dream, a plan for how things will “be” and what we will feel once we meet our goal. Are we proud? Did our team work well together? Is our business knowledge stronger? Can we strive for higher stakes? Is our employee engagement healthy? Are we having any fun? Did we make a profit? Are we becoming experts in our field? Answering these questions can help us define our dreams.
Once we are clear about what it is we are going to create, we can set out our plans of action to support our vision. Isn’t it much more pleasant to work from inspiration and motivation than to grind out a living that is impersonal and visionless? Carving out a meaning in life is what a desired state gets you. From there you will know exactly what else you need to do to have it all! How our strategy is expressed depends to some extent on the tasks at hand. In Article 2, we’ll explore Warrior Strategy.
Timi Gleason, the Strategic Thinking Coach, is a systems thinker, strategic thinker and a Master Coach with specialties in creative thinking and health strategies. To learn more about strategic thinking you can download her free products at www.strategicthinkingnow.com and explore her leadership and organizational development products at www.executivegoals.com. Her book Coach as Strategic Partner: A Survival Guide for Managers & Their HR Business Partners is available through Amazon.com or ExecutiveGoals.com. To explore root cause health strategies and find health articles by Timi go to www.rx-freezone.com.
