Strategic Thinking vs Tactical Thinking

Nearly 40 years ago, Dalhousie professor John Kirk got me hooked on conflict studies and it’s consumed no small part of my recreational learning since.?As we enter the ninth year of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and in particular, as the events of the past 12 months have unfolded, I cannot help but draw parallels between the conduct of war and how we approach transformational change in the public sector.?It’s a subject that perhaps could be better explored over the course of a few hours (and a few pints), but to condense it into a bite size snippet, we only need to recognize that none of policy, strategy, or tactics alone win wars.?

Policy of course, is what we want to accomplish.?It sets the framework for an end point. That’s clear enough, but we often tend to confuse strategy and tactics.?Military leaders have been learning for centuries (and no less so in very recent times) that there's a very big difference between being tactically superior and being strategically effective.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine brings that into sharp relief. In a complex world, it’s a mistake to think tactical success alone is enough to achieve strategic success. What we’ve learned from each of these military conflicts (and unfortunately seem to forget in between) is that in the space between tactics and strategy there needs to be an intermediate level in what I call in the business world, the ‘operational space’–that interconnection with the machinery and practicalities of the overall service ecosystem. It’s the idea that we must knit together the existing cultures and operational processes with each and every one of the planned initiatives, if we are to create momentum and confidence in any project’s strategic goal. ?In conflict that means things like winning hearts and minds across the whole of the theatre of operations.?In business it means things like…well…perhaps not unsurprisingly—winning hearts and minds across the whole of the business operation.

To visualize, we can look at it this way.

On a vertical axis we can place the hierarchy of Policy (the purpose), Strategy (the process), Operational Space (all the cultures, processes and initiatives that are critical to health of the strategy) and Tactics (the execution of individual elements).

On the horizontal axis, we need to think of at least three key aspects of what we're doing.?Firstly, there’s the Technical aspect (the specific technical area we're working on i.e., developing a learning strategy, implementing an automated process, etc.). Next there’s the Environmental aspect (the things we have limited or no control over like budget, laws and regulations, etc.) and finally there's the Human dimension (who are our partners, influencers, allies, detractors—all the people we need to get on song).

What we see too often is that we focus on the bottom left and end up in a tactical-technical hamster wheel. We believe that by being technically competent and executing well, we will be successful.

But the lessons of conflict have taught us otherwise. We are more successful when our primary mindset is hanging out at the intersection of the strategy/policy and human relationships space. We can get little things wrong from time to time in the tactical/technical space and recover from our wounds, but it doesn't matter how good we are in the tactical/technical space, if we don't get the strategy/policy and human relationships bit right. It can be catastrophically fatal to achieving the policy objective.

And that’s what military conflict can teach us about turning policy into action.

Keep your head down and stay situationally aware soldier!

Let me know what you think below…or at the pub if you’d prefer!

#strategicthinking