Strategy and Tactics: What’s the Difference?
It may seem like pedantic semantics, but understanding the difference between strategy and tactics is actually more important than you may realise. Getting to grips with both strategy and tactics can help you to run your business efficiently and effectively, and using them together will help you to get the most out of your business.
What is a Strategy?
Simply put, a strategy looks at the bigger picture. It is essentially a plan put in place in order to achieve something.
In business terms a strategy would look at the ultimate aims of a company and would involve putting certain practices in place in order to achieve the identified goal.
What are Tactics?
The tactics that you use deal with the shorter term, and are the vehicle that you use to drive your business towards the ultimate goal of achieving your strategy aims.
In business terms, tactics could involve anything, from offering giveaways to improve brand awareness to keeping a blog in order to show authority.
Using Strategy and Tactics
When running a business, it is essential to use both strategy and tactics in order to get the best results. Without either, your business has no direction; strategy without tactics means that you have great ideas but do nothing about it; tactics without strategy means a whole lot of action without a plan for the future.
So how do you use them in conjunction?
Communication is Key
First things first, it’s important to communicate your strategy to your workforce. If your staff don’t know where the company is going, how are they going to help it get there and why should they care? By opening up the channels of communication with your staff, you not only show that you trust them, you also open up the opportunity to benefit from their knowledge.
Allowing your staff to shape the tactics you use will help you to get the best solution.
Sync Up Your Practices
It’s essential that your strategy and tactics are consistent throughout the whole company. It’s no good for one area of the company to be on track if another area is pulling in a different direction. Again, communication between departments and staff is essential to achieve this. This is where you can benefit from the services of Q2Q IT, with the use of our strategy service – something that is designed to help improve the alignment between your business strategy and IT strategy.
Here at Q2Q IT, we understand that implementing a business strategy is essential to success, and that’s why we are here to offer our services in ensuring that you succeed. If you would like to talk to a member of our team about how we can play a part in your success, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us by calling 01524 581 690.
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