Strategy and Tactics

Blog surfing got me to a post by Seth Godin about the difference between strategy and tactics. The gist of his message was simple but true: good strategy makes the tactics a lot easier.  We often put extra attention on getting the tactics right, when that might not be the problem:

If you are tired of hammering your head against the wall, if it feels like you never are good enough, or that you're working way too hard, it doesn't mean you're a loser. It means you've got the wrong strategy.

Of course, if you've got a flawed strategy, you need to change it, and that's easier said than done. I thought this quote was useful particularly to the association world:

It takes real guts to abandon a strategy, especially if you've gotten super good at the tactics. That's precisely the reason that switching strategies is often such a good idea. Because your competition is afraid to.

I think associations, generally speaking, like to be good at the tactics, but are afraid to question the strategy.

Comments

[Lisa Junker]

Very interesting post, Jamie! I think part of why associations have a hard time abandoning strategies is that certain elements of a strategy have whole groups of volunteers associated with them. If your association's strategic goals don't mention your volunteer committees (or a specific committee), your chapters, etc., it can be interpreted as a statement that those groups have no value. Or as the first step toward disbanding a particular group. And even if that group really does provide little value and does need to be disbanded, chances are there are some folks who will fight that to the bitter end.

Perhaps some of the "guts" Seth Godin talks about in the quote you cite is really about confrontation ... confrontation of groups instead of individuals. Certainly developing the skills needed to meet such a confrontation head-on and manage it successfully would be an important first step.

[Jamie Notter]

Yes! And herein lies the link betwen strategy and leadership. Leadership in associations is defined, primarily, by structure. To be a "leader" you maneuver your way through the various committees, onto the Board, and into the Executive Committee. We accept that as a fact of life. Of course, we also end up developing strategy by structure as well. Each committee writes its section of the plan. Tying leadership and structure to strategy binds your hands. It makes it very personal, when it shouldn't be. Structures should enhance organizational capacity (for both leadership and strategy), but the work of leadership and strategy goes way beyond the structure. I agree that we are weak in controntation skills (respectfully contentious, as I said on my blog), but that will only go so far unless we change our approach to leadership and strategy.