Operational Governance Knowledge Flashcards No. 17/19

Strategy vs. Tactics

From the Operational Governance flashcard deck; today this discipline goes by BizOps. The original card is republished here as a field note.

01 What is it

The key word here is choice: you choose a course of action while sacrificing other possible alternatives.

While tactics is about facing specific circumstances, strategy is a reflection of the set of choices that underlie every action (the underlying thread). Strategy is more abstract and overarching; tactics are more specific, and usually circumscribed within a strategy.

02 When is it useful

Not very often anymore, as the terms are spent from overuse and misuse.

Strategic and tactical thinking are useful for making coherent decisions across a set of diverse but related problems. This coherence is key to strengthening your competitive position against adversaries — and therefore increasing your odds of winning, in games, business, war, or persuasion.

03 How to use it

  • Know what your strategy is: distill the commonalities that reflect your priorities and your calculated bets.
  • When making a decision, ask yourself: “is this decision coherent with my overall strategy?”
  • Learn to realize when you’re in a tactical situation (a specific, but complex, circumstance with a range of choices to make).
  • Only deploy tactics that are coherent with — and do not undermine — the strategy to which they are circumscribed.

04 Worked examples from the card

The 2018 World Cup

  • Strategy: Lopetegui and Hierro’s strategy was to rely on the player Costa to increase the number of games won, because they thought it was their main competitive strength. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.
  • Tactics: if the score is favorable [circumstance] and the rival defence advances, keep Costa and another scorer in the offside line for counterattacks, and prioritize passes to Costa.
  • Implied sacrifices: lost opportunities to profit from other potential star players.

Apple vs. Android (Google)

  • Apple — strategy: aspirational, high price point, outsourced but integrated supply chain. Tactics: a discount on new devices if you recycle your old one. Implied sacrifices: market share.
  • Android — strategy: aim for quantity, every price range, a window to Google services. Tactics: one year of Google Play Movies free with the purchase of a Motorola One. Implied sacrifices: consistent quality.

Military

  • Strategy: leverage diplomacy (geopolitics) with key allies to maintain the technological edge and financing sources.
  • Tactics: “if it didn’t rain recently [circumstance], burn the field so the enemy cannot camp there” — or “approach the battlefield from the upper ground, fast, before the rival does”.
  • Implied sacrifices: diplomacy implies compromises; speed implies depletion of resources.

05 Common pitfalls

  • Thinking “year = strategy; month = tactics”, “country = strategy; city = tactics”, “boss = strategy; worker = tactics”. No.
  • Misleading by implying that strategy = more important and tactics = less important; misusing the terms as euphemisms.
  • A strategy is NOT necessarily the sum of several tactics.
  • Confusing these terms with a wishlist, to-dos, or a plan.
  • Bear in mind both terms were synonyms historically.
  • Relying on tactics that in the long term might detract from your strategy.

06 References and resources

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Michael Porter, On Competition (1998)