Avoid Tactical Overpower: Foster Strategic Minds
What’s the Difference?
Strategic objectives are long-term, while operational or tactical objectives define a path to get there. The latter are short or medium-term.
Let’s make this a bit more tangible (as is often done with examples). A strategic objective for a company could be to decide to enter a new foreign market or to target medium-sized clients (mid-end) with higher budgets and average baskets, and lower payment difficulties than very small clients.
Then, there could be many tactical and short-term objectives already identified to achieve this: opening a production facility in this new country (for the first case), enhancing the service offering with Feature X, which is sorely lacking for these mid-end clients today, etc.
Don’t let tactics overshadow strategic thinking among your colleagues
Most effective organizations rely on the autonomy of individuals and teams, a concept dear to me for many years. Autonomy paradoxically requires everyone to be constantly well-connected with each other.
A Necessary Context for All
However, for autonomy to be expressed and relevant local decisions to be made, it is imperative that everyone in the organization thoroughly understands the context and strategic objectives.
Even by avoiding micromanagement, leaving individuals alone with only tactical goals (i.e., the next actions the organization deems most relevant to achieving strategic objectives) risks pushing strategic thinking into the background of their daily work.
Missed opportunities
This is even more unfortunate as, at their level, it becomes impossible for them to contribute and find better alternatives to achieve strategic objectives. What a missed opportunity and waste for an organization…
