Strategies and Tactics
One of the interesting things that I have come across in helping businesses select KPI is the subtle confusion between strategies and tactics.
In its simplest form:
- Strategies make you effective - doing the right things
- Tactics make you efficient - doing things right
Many businesses set their strategy, then fail to relate this to tactical plans in a meaningful way. For example, a strategy may be to increase gross revenue by 4% in 12 months. They then set out to develop the marketing plan, detailing product portfolio goals and campaign profiles and designate these as their ‘tactics’. However, these are just a lower level of strategy – the marketing strategy. The tactics are defined in how the decisions are made in the product portfolio and how the campaigns are executed. It is this very last step that is so often overlooked. Whilst it would be fair to say that tactics are indeed the actions one takes to execute a strategy – in terms of KPI selection the important measure is in how well you execute each key tactic.
Success is a combination of doing the right things [strategy] and doing things right [tactics]. Of the two, doing the right things has the greater impact in delivering the revenue – doing things right increases the profit.

