“Tactical responses is all you can manage?? I need a strategy!!”

I’ve heard this expressed more times than I’ve shaved with my other hand! (see my post on “Changing hands to effect change“)

Often shot across the desk, meeting/boardroom table, partition, water cooler, etc, at an audience that nods agreeably whist thinking “What does he/she actually want?”

Post-event, the discussion is rife…

it brings to mind the age-old discussion about “Why my sports team is better than yours”.

“You guys haven’t won a game all season! You’re 0-5 and we are at the top of the board”

“Yeah well we’re a developing team we brought on ( x 2) and you’ll see us in the finals if not this year, then definitely the next!”

And contained therein, are clues to the difference between strategy and tactics.

Your strategy is your “Grand Plan” to win (and often!).

It takes into account multiple factors:

* An achievable goal -Win championships. (Garner market share or exploit new frontiers)
* Adequate resources -A develop a winning team of players and leadership. (sufficient capability and sponsorship)
* A realistic time frame -The number of the seasons it will take to reach the goal (business/financial cycles)
* Practical milestones along the way -Top three this season, championship winner the next (20% market share, 2m units sold)
* Disruption -Mid-season loss of key players, or leadership. (Start ups, technology/market shifts, financial impacts)
* Resiliency -How & when do we review and adjust our approach to meet persistent challenges? -Develop tactical approaches and/or revise the strategy.

A strategy is a living thing, because it relies upon and is subject to, living things.

Tactics are different but equally important. They are the decisions you make and the things you do during the process of enacting your strategy. Tactics tend to be short-lived and often repeatable. They are implicit in and integral to strategy.

 

Imagine yourself as the team coach: Your key player in defense is suddenly out of action. You shuffle players between the bench and the field to fill the missing player’s role to preserve the chance of victory.

You have implemented a tactical response to a problem and it supports the overall strategy.

If you were to say, “Hey! isn’t it just a difference in time frames?” You would be correct to a large extent but thinking about them differently will yield greater value. Having a “Grand Plan” allows you to direct your overall effort.

Tactical responses should ultimately result in progress toward your goal however, they can also signal a review of your strategy and sometimes tactical approaches can actually be contrary as you respond to challenges along the way.

Beware of strategy “by Inference”
Tactics do exist and may appear to be independent of an articulated strategy. They are a form of “mini strategy” that occasionally (sometimes intentionally) may create the illusion of a strategy.

To articulate your strategy as a plan, and then toss it in the dusty filing cabinet in the basement, never to be revisited, risks your strategy becoming your own blurred, orphaned and incongruous epitaph.

So to avoid a modern “Stragedy” (a portmanteau of a “Strategic Tragedy”)

Consider these three key ideas:

Articulate your strategy (The grand plan to win the final).
Use tactics to win each game and deal with challenges.
Maintain an effective strategy (strategising). This ensures that you will win the championship more than once!

A short story about a way to deal with large-scale change in IT.

Actually it applies equally in technology, organisations, business and life in general.

I have a saying :

“If you can’t change the view, change your perspective”

(Very) late last year I took time to reflect on the year that was and think about the one to come.

It was one of the healthiest choices I have made for a long time.

I relaxed, cleared my brain from work clutter, and let a couple of New Year resolutions bubble up:

1. Remove one thing each day that I no longer need.

2. Find the intersection between what I like to do, what i am good at and my career

So far, I’m kicking goals.

I started this blog and even lost some excess weight in the deal!

The thing about resolutions is the implication that you’re not actually living them. Therefore, you have to make a conscious decision to apply yourself to making them a reality

I realised that as a creature of habit, change was the most difficult challenge for me and in fact, the real value in my resolutions was how to deal with fear.

THE FEAR OF CHANGE

i took the KISS approach. -And broke change down into manageable snack-sized pieces.

I looked at some of the things that I did each day that cemented routine in my life:

I sat in the same chair for my breakfast each morning.

I ate the same cereal

And the real kicker……….

I ALWAYS shaved with my right hand…….

By changing the little things, the intent was set and change became a way of doing things instead of  an obstacle in itself.

In this post, James seems to make the complex seem simple. Some excellent points that challenge the standard business approaches when they are applied to startups and small to mid-size, agile, service delivery organisations. Could it be that many of these apply to the mega-corp?