What is strategy?
A strategy is a plan to achieve your long-term goals under conditions of uncertainty. Your strategy outlines your path toward achieving your mission. Your strategy should involve research, planning, and internal reflection.
What makes a good strategy?
- It reflects your core values and is actionable.
- It aligns daily activities and decision-making with your overall goals.
What are tactics?
- Tactics are concrete steps that describe how you’re going to achieve your strategy.
What makes a good tactic?
- A good tactic has a clear purpose that helps your strategy.
- It has a finite timeline where specific activities will be completed, and their impacts measured.
How they interact:
Strategy and tactics should work together to achieve your goal. It’s much easier to adjust tactics and course-correct than it is to overhaul your entire strategy.
Measuring what matters:
- What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) you are using to determine the efficacy of your strategy?
- Is there a benchmark to compare yourself to?
- If your KPI is consistently lagging, what steps will you take to correct this?
- Are your tactics being executed?
- Is the person assigned the task doing what they need to do?
- Are the tactics helping you execute your strategy and thus helping you to achieve your goals?
How does this relate to your retirement?
Most people have a goal of having a successful retirement. They don’t really plan out how they are going to achieve this, but rather piece together tactics as they go. Without a long-term vision and KPIs to measure the progress you won’t know if you are on track or if you need to make course corrections.
This leads to reactions to short-term events that could lead to long-term outcomes that may not be desirable. We tend to find people who have a plan, follow a process, think strategically, and act tactically, more successful over time.
Success means different things to different people and when you set your own benchmark for success, happiness will follow.
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