Two Terms – One Successful Plan – Smyelin Media Inc.

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Strategies and tactics are crucial necessities when it comes to the success of your business or non-profit organization. But these two terms often get misunderstood and thus the brand fails at reaching any plans they have. People mistaken that a strategy and a tactic are the same thing and have the same definition. WRONG!

So what exactly is a strategy? What is a tactic? It’s simple. First you need to ask yourself questions, like “Why are you in business?” “Where are you trying to get to?” “Which markets are you going to play in and what activities are you going to do within that market?” Once you’ve answered these then you could start defining your strategies and your tactics.

A strategy is a method or a plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or a solution to a problem (www.BusinessDictionary.com). In other words, a strategy is WHAT you are going to do, in order to reach a goal. For example, I want to engage conversation with my social audience on Twitter and Facebook. What is my strategy? Exactly that – engage more conversation with my audience on Twitter and Facebook social media platforms! Its so simple, but people tend to get too technical when it comes to defining and utilizing a strategy.

Now what is a tactic? How does a tactic and a strategy go hand in hand? A tactic utilizes specific resources to achieve sub-goals that support the mission (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2013/01/14/the-difference-between-strategy-and-tactics/). A tactic is simply the steps you take, and HOW you are going to achieve your goals. Using my example above of engaging more conversation with my audience on Twitter and Facebook, my tactic would be to stay consistent and participate actively in those social media platforms – respond to other peoples tweets, comment on other peoples Facebook posts.

http://accelerator-group.com/strategy-vs-tactics/

To conclude, the difference between strategy and tactics: strategy is done above the shoulders, tactics are done below the shoulders. Strategies involve thinking, brainstorming, analysis, research, etc and tactics involve people, tools and practices (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2013/01/14/the-difference-between-strategy-and-tactics/). The two must work together, and as a result, success is evident!

7 comments

Saurabh Thakkar
Posted on September 22, 2014 at 8:59 pm
Well written blog article Kayla! Describes in simple terms, the difference as well as importance of strategies and tactics.Also, the one line conclusion was a bang on the point. Superb!

- admin
  Posted on September 23, 2014 at 1:31 am
  Thank you for the great feedback, Saurabh!
  
Siyuan
Posted on September 22, 2014 at 10:39 pm
It just feels like travelling,isn’t it?When we want to travel around,The first step is to decide the destination,then is making several specific plans about how to get there or how to save our money.I totally agree that strategy and tactics must work together.Since strategy is about drawing a map for the business to show the goals,competitors and positions, it will be too abstract in terms of implementationt.So leaders in a company really need tactics to find the most effective approach for achieving their final target.

- admin
  Posted on September 23, 2014 at 1:30 am
  Thats a really good analogy. I like that a lot! Thanks Siyuan!
  
Claudia Cheung
Posted on September 23, 2014 at 3:49 am
I really love how you summed up what strategy and tactics were with that one sentence of one being above the shoulder and one being below the shoulders. I loved your examples too, especially when describing tactics having to be consistent. Many people often forget that our online presence always has to be consistent. Most of the time we forget to be consistent and our online presence fades away. Consistency and creativity is definitely what retains our audience the most. Awesome post!

Dinorah Flores
Posted on September 23, 2014 at 6:20 pm
Kayla you gave us a simple but well illustrated meaning of strategies and tactics. The time spending on each one, are your results. Many companies forget that ones they have identified their goal is time to spend time to set some steps to follow. It means they need to spend time with their costumers, audience, followers etc. To get to know what they want, that way they give them what are asking for.

Supriya Shrivastava
Posted on September 25, 2014 at 2:46 pm
This is a great post Kayla. I love how you mentioned Strategies involve thinking, analysis, research and Tactics involve people, tools and practices. This is exactly what it is. One needs to use the tactics to come up with an effective strategy. I also liked how the video you posted makes it even more easier to understand the difference between the two terminologies.