Elizabeth Foughty
A common challenge I see at an organization? Objectives, strategies and tactics – one of these is missing, people don’t understand what is changeable, or someone has conflated them.
For instance – and most commonly – there will be an objective: Grow Revenue. And tactics: e.g., Increase marketing leads at the top of the funnel. But no strategy. This leads to blindly working on tactics, and makes it very hard to prioritize work. If you feel like your organization is in churn, always working hard but getting nowhere, it’s likely you have objectives but no strategy (OR, you don’t have alignment on the strategy, and folks are pursuing their own strategies!).
If you have no clear stated strategy, what you have is hope that it will all work out. And as my brother, former Navy officer, Pat Foughty is fond of quoting “Hope is not a strategy”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of hope and optimism (with the world as it is today, we need both more than ever!), but those are attitudes, not strategies.
Some folks like to complicate matters by adding in goals and attempting to clarify between goals and objectives (it’s me, I’m some people). You can find these under “GOST”. But really, these can be combined to avoid getting too in your head about the difference. It’s really a goal – what are you aiming for, plus objective – by how much. A G-objective if you will. Pro tip: This should also align with your mission!
G-Objective: What are we trying to achieve?
- Grow Revenue of ABC corp by 20%
Strategy: How do we get there?
- Solve X problem in Y market by selling our widgets.
- Make Y market aware of our amazing widgets to solve X problem.
Tactics: What are the steps of the strategy?
Tactics should have metrics, but be careful because sometimes these metrics can be confused for objectives
- Understand if our widgets is really solving their problem (prove ROI)
- Try out media campaign with a, b, c metrics
- Utilize MEDPICC for sales (metric=increased depth of accounts, understanding why deals don’t close)
- Have amazing UX for Y widget to encourage use (metric = increased usage)
- Don’t spend more than we make (or be financed appropriately)
Each layer – objectives, strategy, tactics – have more things across more teams. What’s also important here is the flexibility of each “layer”.
Your tactics should be the most flexible. If your plan to create leads in your market of choice isn’t working, maybe you’re using the wrong media or message. Address that first before changing strategies.
If you’ve trialed multiple tactics and you’re still not getting anywhere, maybe you’re pursuing the wrong strategy. Maybe Z market is a better fit. And lastly, if you’ve really thoroughly exhausted your strategies, perhaps the objective just isn’t going to work, in which case it’s time to rethink and perhaps take up knitting instead.
Where people also start to lose the plot is when the conflate all these things. They get really attached to a tactic: use social media platform <P> (darn you Elon, for taking away my ability to say social media platform X!) and try to make it a strategy: we’re growing brand awareness on this platform! Even if it’s not supporting a G-objective: Grow Revenue by 20%. Try not to mix these up (or get too attached!).
Tl;Dr you need all three, tactics should be the first thing to adjust, and don’t confuse them!
Elizabeth Foughty 