Strategic Thinking: Don’t Confuse Tactics for Strategy

“There’s nothing worse than a sharp picture of a fuzzy concept.”  —Ansel Adams

“There is nothing more wasteful than becoming highly efficient at doing the wrong thing.” –Peter Drucker

Mike Michalowicz’s article The 90-Day Method: A Strategy For Business Growth in Difficult Times offers some suggestions for business to strategize.  He says that a business owner should ask what they have done in the last 90 days that has brought results, and then replicate those things that were successful.  Even though these may sound like sage advice, they can be interpreted as tactics instead of strategy.

I found that Bill Birnbaum’s book, Strategic Thinking, A Four Piece Puzzle, distinguished between the two very well.  Bill defines strategic thinking as a top-down big picture.  When thinking strategically, you are not concerned about whether you ran a double-shift to produce your product.  That would fall under Mike Michalowicz’s “things you did right,” but would be a tactic.  Instead, Bill Birnbaum argues to think strategically, “you would consider the needs of your customer, the benefits you offer that customer, and the reason your customer buys your products or services.”  In other words, you’d be concerned with doing the right things, rather than doing things right.

Another way Bill put it was that you use strategic thinking in deciding what to do, and tactical thinking in deciding how to do it.

Thinking tactically is very tempting because most managers and owners are in the trenches “putting out fires” and fixing problems.

But why is it important to think strategically?  Strategic thinking is important because it results in a strategic vision that is shared among your management team which is based on the team’s deep understanding of the business.

Don’t get me wrong.  Strategic planning is a highly structured process with well thought-out objectives and a number of strategies  designed to accomplish these objectives.

So, what is the easiest way to think strategically?  A commonly used tool is the SWOT matrix.  Most managers know that it stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  However, where business people miss their marks is  that they don’t consider these four attributes in line with their key success factors. According to Bill, you must list these factors this way. For our organization to be successful, we must be especially good at the following three activities…

Taking these steps will help a lot in getting business owners to think strategically in order to see the horizon, and not technically in order to just avoid the pot hole in front of you.