Strategy vs Tactics | Uncommon strategies for success

What’s the difference between strategy and tactics?

In my last article I talked about how knowing the specifics of your goal - the what - and also how you want to feel as you achieve it is vital to success.

Even more important is what you want to do once the goal is achieved.

Having a goal and no next-steps - however vaguely mapped out - will mean you hit your goal and just… stop. Whereas if you know your goal is the first step in a bigger plan, you approach it looking at the big picture, not an end in itself.?

If built well, your strategy will have several smaller goals. These are milestones along the way to achieving your big goal a few years from now. Hitting each milestone goal feels great and moves you towards 'the big one'.

So we have big goal, smaller goals and then we use tactics to make the strategy even better.

Wait, strategy and tactics aren’t the same thing?!

I know - even though we often use the words interchangeably, they're actually very different. And if used well tactics'll supercharge your strategy + results..

The problem I often see though - is clients think they've got a strategy and it's either a vague plan - or worse, it's just a few fancy tactics strung together. It's easy for this to happen as there's so much confusion out there. Often those business-in-a-box type launches aren't selling a whole strategy, just some excellent tactics. Ok, but not what you need.

Tactics are the little things that will help you improve your strategy. If you remove tactics, you can still hit your goal (you’ve still got your strategy to move you forward). If you remove the strategy itself - you can’t .

Let’s go back to our Dress Day example for detail.

You'll remember - you have a big event - you decide to look amazing in a big expensive dress. That’s your goal.?

Getting to amazing on Dress Day might mean 6 months:

• starving yourself daily to be thinner
• doing plank exercises solidly, so you have a washboard stomach
• searching for a dress that makes your current size and shape look wonderful
• in therapy learning to love the shape you are?so you feel great whatever you wear

To succeed on Dress Day - it’s important to be very specific about what ‘looking amazing’ means. Lack of clarity on what your goal actually is will hugely slow you down. In particular consider your mind state - how will you know you’ve achieved the goal? Is it how you feel on the day? Or how you look in the photo? Knowing which will help you choose your strategy to get there.?

Then there’s the dress itself -?what’s your strategy to get the perfect Dress Day frock?:

• Go high street - but do the mindset work everything looks good on you as you glow from the inside
• Go designer and walk into Prada + Gucci looking for the perfect thing
• Go couture and fly to Paris
• Go bespoke and find the perfect non-couture designer to make it
• Bribe your aunty to make you something from scratch. She's go skills, it'll look good.

All valid - all different strategies to the same result: You and the dress looking amazing.

Now come the tactics. How do you make the dress look better on the day:

• Super-strength suck-you-in under wear
• Not eating all day
• An actual corset + not eating all day
• Really comfortable shoes - so your face isn’t grimacing all day and you're laughing in the pics when everyone else is looking pinched.
• Bribe that auntie to take in your high street frock so it fits so well it looks couture?

Tactics - you’re taking a good idea (your strategy) , and adding a little extra something (the tactic) so it works even better.

Do you need all this thinking to buy a dress? Of course not, you can just wear whatever you wore last time and those good-enough shoes. It’ll work as an outfit. But it's unlikely to make you shine on Dress Day.?

To do that some of the tactics above are going to leave you looking and feeling great on the day. Not just fabulous but also happy in your head and able to wear anything on any day more confidently. All the above are valid Dress choices, some leave you not just looking stunning on that one day, but set up for a happier future.

And sometimes even the fact you’ve worn a dress can be a statement.

Witness Billy Porter in that dress at the Oscars. He’s black, he’s gay and he’s a man in a dress and without doubt he won the Oscars that year. Which is saying something as he couldn’t have won an actual Oscar… as he wasn’t even nominated.

But if his goal was increase his star value, get noticed - all of which an actual Oscar will do. Then he won. Plus he changed the conversation about gender, sexuality and even red carpet events. Not bad for a few hours in velvet.?

So the dress was a strategy. And on?the day, the tactics to achieve that camera ready look were hair and makeup to look stunning.?

If you’d like to read more about strategy seen through a different lens… head straight to Evil Coach to see strategy through the lens of the Kink community.

We learn more when looking at things through a slightly different lens. Whether it's Dress Day or new uses for phone charger chords over at Evil Coach - come learn the building blocks of strategy so you grow your business more effectively (while looking strategically fabulous. obv).

Come join us for the Evil Plan - two weeks to a radically different view on you business.