Strategy, Strategic and Goals

You often hear people talk about strategy and being strategic in interchangeable ways. The reality is, these are not the same; added to this, people often mistake strategy or strategic thinking for goals.

Many leaders create a lot of confusion for their teams by not being able to apply these concepts properly.

Here's how I look at it and how best I have found to communicate it.

Goals: The end state, where would we like to be, what do we want to achieve

Strategic: What direction should we be moving to in to create or further leverage an advantage

Strategy: Specific actions and initiatives that will make real or enhance your advantage

As you can see, strategy is actually about what your team is going to do.

Being able to focus your team this way is essential to avoid the trap of having everyone working extremely hard yet never fully accomplishing the goal. All too often, leaders explain the goals and the strategic thinking of the initiative and assume that their teams will know exactly what to do in order to achieve the mandate.

Remeber, everyone is unique and will exercise subjectivity. My paradigms are not the same as yours, and the way I look at something will never be exactly how anyone else sees it.

You will be far more effective working with your team to achieve the overall goals, if together you develop specific and measureable actions that each person will be responsible for.

Every action or decision should be challenged by asking if it brings you closer to achieving the goal. It is easy for teams to start working tangentially, by planning out your actions you will be able to focus the team's effort (no matter how small an individual action) towards the target.

Leverage the power of stacking aggregate gains.

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