Strategic Vs Tactical Thinking
What is strategic sense? What is tactical sense?
Are they the same thing? Or are they two very different things to mean the same thing?
In a way, strategic sense is when you basically thinks thing through in the long term; what will happen 2 years from now given the conditions now, or what can I do after being presented with such and such a condition now. That’s long term.
Now, tactical sense is a kind of short term thinking that deals with the things that will happen almost immediately. Like the day to day operations of a company perhaps.
Why do I bring this up? It seems that there are many people, including people in positions of power or leadership can be simply classified into two basic thinking types: The Strategic Thinker, and the Tactical Thinker.
The Strategic thinker takes the position that since the future (one or two years later) is basically unknowable, it is best to think of it as being fluid, and make any decisions about said period with flexibility. Make a decision, thus imprinting the future into the present; ergo, by making that decision, the thinker is basically determining the future, thus making plans for the future (something very hard to do) much easier to do, since he only has to fill in the blanks up until the decision date.
Compare that with the Tactical Thinker. This thinker only thinks what will happen tomorrow, based on detailed plans already prepared for him by the Strategic Thinker. Based on this vague sense of planning, this thinker will go out of his way to make sure the plans is put into actions, disregarding anything else; not even the possibility that the plan he used may be wrong.
Thus, I want to point out that usually the head of department in a company should be a Strategic Thinker; he needs to direct the department into the future, by predicting what’s in the future, and make plans to meet them. However, unfortunately, there are some department head that is as un-enlightened as Britney Spears on a morality campaign. When faced with a decision about the future, he starts to drags his feet, and throwing all kinds of nonsense about not knowing the schedule of work or some other bullshit.
In conclusion, it can be surmised that this particular department head is in fact a Tactical Thinker, and not a very good one at that. Thus, how can anyone be expected to believe that this department will pull through any situation with its head held high and an obvious crack is leading them?
