For example, if one of your tactics is to improve your SEO through content marketing initiatives, you can measure your success by seeing how many keywords you can rank for on the first page of the SERPs. If you want to execute a social media marketing plan to achieve your goals, you need to monitor your engagement rates over time. We could have strategies for everything from gaining political power or promoting to building relationships and expanding a blog`s audience. Whatever we try, we would do well to understand how strategy and tactics work, the distinction and how we can bring the two together. Without a strategy, we run the risk of walking through life uncertain and confused about whether we are making progress toward what we want. Without tactics, we are destined for a life of wishful thinking or chronic discontent. As Lawrence Freedman writes in Strategy: A History, « Without strategy, it would be considered negligent to face a problem or strive to achieve a goal. Certainly, no military campaign, corporate investment or government initiative is likely to receive support unless there is an evaluation strategy. There is always a call to strategy when the path to a certain goal is not simple. And without tactics, you become dependent on pure luck to implement your strategy. I see that the debate about strategy versus tactics is misleading. Understanding the differences led me to see the dynamics of strategy and tactics in a different light. Top-level resource allocation allows you to make the most of the resources available to you.
So what strategies can you use to maximize your wealth and capital? Here`s how they fit into the Cascade strategy model: These tactics help identify bottlenecks in your existing processes and provide data you can use to make better decisions, hoping to free up more capacity in the resources you already have. Long before the word strategy made sense in business, it was used in the context of war. In this context, it meant the battle plan developed by one side to gain an advantage or victory over an opponent. The term tactical referred to specific short-term actions of soldiers on the battlefield to support strategy. Measuring the progress of your tactics is much less important than measuring the success of your strategy. Tactics are the best estimate of short-term actions, when executed, will help the company achieve its strategic goals. But the tactics themselves are not a measure of the strategy`s success. The best explanation of strategy versus tactics can be summed up by Sun Tzu, who said: « Strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory. Tactics without strategy are noise before defeat. The two are fully interconnected and cannot exist successfully without the other. 4. Even the best strategy and tactic doesn`t cover everything.
As strategy and tactics became military terminology, their use extended to planning in many areas of life. Strategy is an overall plan or set of objectives. Changing strategy is like trying to topple an aircraft carrier – it can be done, but not quickly. Tactics are the specific actions or steps you take to achieve your strategy. For example, a nation`s strategy in a war might be to win the hearts and minds of the enemy`s civilian population. To achieve this, they could use tactics such as radio broadcasts or building hospitals. A personal strategy may be to embark on a specific career, while your tactics may include choosing your educational path, finding a helpful mentor, or differentiating yourself from the competition. Strategy describes the goal and how to get there, and tactics describe the specific actions you will take along the way. When you can easily see how all the elements of your strategy, including tactics and KPIs, fit together, you`ll have a clearer view of the activities that are actually moving things in the right direction. In ClearPoint, you can see the goals associated with your KPIs.
So if you see a KPI improve, but the associated strategy remains unchanged, the KPI may not have the impact you thought and it`s time to go back to the drawing board. Moreover, neither strategy nor tactics have value if they are not measured. Companies use KPIs to measure progress toward overall goals. KPIs use quantifiable data that shows progress and points to each area for improvement.