Page 181 - Midas Touch

Lesson #1: The difference between tactics and strategies

Tactics are what you do. In very simple terms, a leader must define the
single tactic, the single objective of the team or organization.

All strategies are in support of ensuring that the single tactic, the
objective, is accomplished.

Businesses begin to fail when they have too many tactics and too many
strategies. You’ll get what I’m talking about when you see the following
diagram of a successful military campaign.

Using Domino’s Pizza as an example (the pizza with the 30-minutes-or-
less promise), all the company’s strategies—advertising strategies, legal
strategies, accounting strategies, product-development strategies—are
clearly encompassed within the B-I Triangle. All these strategies must
support the single tactic, the focus of the business, the promise to the
customer.

Problems arise in organizations when strategies become more important
than the singular unifying tactic.