Strategy and Tactics II

 

Love and Marriage

Love and marriage, love and marriage

They go together like a horse and carriage

This I tell you brother

You can't have one without the other.

Some things just go together.  But we shouldn't overemphasize one at the expense of the other.

Strategy and Tactics are often used in discussing military affairs.  If we lose every battle, we can’t expect to win the war, but according to the familiar adage  we don’t want to “win the battle (e.g. have a tactical victory) but lose the war (e.g. have a strategic defeat).”  There are those battles that are too costly to win,  i.e. Pyrrhic victories.  There are also strategic retreats where the battle may be lost in order to fight again and win the war. 

Pearl Harbor might have been a tactical victory for the Japanese, but it led to their strategic defeat. Dunkirk is remembered not as a tactical victory by the British, but as a strategic retreat that was an important part of the British victory in WWII. 

Planning, which is merely another name for strategy, is different than operations, which is merely another name for tactics.  They have different goals and time frames.  But both are needed.  It would be a mistake to have an operational success today, that leads to a long-term planning failure in the future.  Both planning and operations are needed in a successful organization.  You can’t have one without the other.