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Look, I don’t mean to get all ‘heretical’ or nuffin’, but what does ‘Strategic Plan’ actually mean? Can you have an un-strategic plan? When does a plan cease to be ’strategic’?
So too, what is the difference between a ‘tactician’ and a ’strategist’? Surely the one must involve some element of the other — I could not envisage some sort of strategy without, even subconscious, cognition that the ability to bring it to fruition actually exists.
Yes, I admit that Einstein, Leonardo, H.G. Wells and others of their equally rare ilk were able to dream the hitherto undreamed, to articulate that which was until then (now?) inarticulable, but we do not all inhale their rarefied air.
Do we create meaningless barriers for ourselves unnecessarily through the use of the very business jargon we should be seeking to destroy?
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This post created with ecto whilst I wait for my beloved Zoundry to have a minor technical hitch fixed. Whoever said ‘ecto’ was good must not have tried to incorporate images into their blog. Ecto seems to have been born of an age when blogs were geek-to-geek text chats; certainly the ability to easily incorporate images is a major feature missing from this blog editor. I spent several hours
today creating some posts using the browser-based editor that comes with Wordpress, which made me yet again appreciate the strengths of a good offline blog editor. Zoundry is one, but Ecto isn’t. At least not for me.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I think having a distinction between a strategist and a tactician is necessary. It’s only jargon when the terms are used where they are not relevant and without care.
Strategists can be brilliant at creating ideas and dealing with the big picture, but you wouldn’t trust them with the execution because of their refusal to budge from their position once certain things go bad or prove unworkable.
Your tactician on the other hand is the person that can deal with exceptional circumstances and rectify any contradictions between idealism and reality as and when it occurs.
The two descriptions are not mutually exclusive. But there is a very distinctive difference and both elements are required to make plans work, in my opinion.
You most certainly can have a non-strategic plan. Consider the communicator who focuses on activities, regardless of their relationship to business objectives. You’ve seen these plans: “Send 15 news releases on our products to the targeted list. Produce 12 copies of the newsletter on time and on budget.”
To Dan’s point above, indeed, sooner or later to have to tell people what you are going to do — but we first have to understand what we are trying to achieve! What is the desired outcome, not just the desired output…?
The strategist thinks through the business objectives and creates a guiding philosophy that shapes the tactics. The tactician examines the methods available that are likely to realise the strategy… It’s two halves of the same coin…
G’day gentlemen. I really appreciate your comments. My only thought is that surely there must be some ‘agenda’ or motive behind even “Produce 12 copies of the newsletter on time and on budget”. It may not be very GOOD strategy, but it is strategic-led just the same.
Dictionary.com has this as one of its definitions: “a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result”. By this definition the 12 newsletters ARE strategic.
Over to you…
well if you look up both words on wikipedia - a tactic is a method to help achieve a certain goal.
a strategy is a long term plan designed to achieve a certain goal.
cant you say that a tactic is the way you get to the goal ? and a strategy is a “map” of how to get there ?…
I just did a similar post on “innovation” and “creativity”… words words words..
Hen, you are so right — “words, words, words”. My point entirely. One cannot create the ‘words’ without the mental capacity to create both the start and the end point.
If I may add to this, if their is a vision that wants to be acted out, one must plan a strategy of how it will be acted out.If their is no plan of action, the attempt will be unsuccessful.