Objectives Strategies Tactics: What’s the Difference?

Objectives, strategies, tactics. What’s the difference?

If you’ve reached this page, you’re likely as confused as many people have been since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. What do these over-used words mean – objectives, strategies and tactics – and what’s the difference between them? And how do they differ from other words thrown around in the same breath, such as Purpose, Goals, Issues?

I have some thoughts.

GOST?

If you’ve done any research so far, you no doubt came across GOST.

Pronounced as GHOST, GOST stands for:

Goal
Objective
Strategy
Tactic

Attributed to Dr Peter Gollwitzer, a Professor of Psychology at New York University, GOST defines the differences between the areas of organisational planning.

First and foremost, these are general phrases, they are not absolutes.

Use them as talking points when you talk with leadership. Understand how your organisation defines these items for itself today, and then plan accordingly. For example, some phrases – like goal vs objective – may be redundant to your workplace.

If nothing else, this model of goals-objectives-strategies-tactics may give you specific words for something you knew but couldn’t articulate.

Goals

At its most simple, a goal is what you want to achieve.

Often broad in scope, a goal aligns to a higher perspective, such as your organisation’s vision, mission and values.

Goals tend to be qualititative in that they describe the ideal future, so they are often long-term, intangible and abstract.

There are three different types of goals:

Outcome-specific goals are the most broad, and used when the vision is most important. Let the Big Picture motivate us forward.
- Example: Increasing customer loyalty.
Process-specific goals are used when a change is most important. Something new must be accomplished.
- Example: Managing changes in new leadership.
Time-specific goals are the most narrow, used when time is most important. Something must be achieved by date.
- Example: Expanding staff to manage our new CRM software by year’s end.

Depending upon your organisation and leadership, you may need to make your goals specific and measureable.

For others, you may find goals and objectives are the same thing. So, before you get started, ask for direction so you aren’t making your plan redundant or confusing.

Objectives

Objectives are statements expressing a distinct mission, a purpose or a standard.

If articulated properly, you achieve your objectives within a defined time-frame, using appropriate level staffing and a reasonable budget.

Generally, an objective is more specific than a goal. One goal may comprise several objectives. (Your organisation may have these two definitions reversed!)

Objectives should be written as SMART, a system championed by George T. Doran in his 1981 article in Management Review.

If they’re new to you, SMART stands for:

Specific – A precise outcome
Measurable – A defined and objective figure to demonstrate that the objective has been achieved
Achievable – Realistic objectives, given all resources
Relevant – Directly linked to the overall goal
Time Specific – The expectations of when the achievement should be reached

Some consultants with a book to sell have stretched out Doran’s original system to SMAAART, for example.

Ignore them, or use them with realistic skepticism. That said, don’t add unnecessary complexity.

Shouldn’t you also use SMART with Goals?

First, that depends upon the type of goal.

Second, be extra careful to not go overboard with too much measurement at every level. A good rule of thumb: think of Goals-Objectives-Strategies-Tactics as an inverted pyramid. Use more detailed measurement at the bottom, to ensure things get done, and be less specific with the measurement as you go up.

Take a tip from Design Thinking. Rather than create SMART goals focused on cold, hard facts, think of FUZZY Goals with ESP. Fuzzy goals are:

Emotional – they are goals which engage people’ passion and energy
Sensory – they are goals which stimulate the body’s senses
Progressive – they are indicative without being too specific

A final point here: Objectives are different than Outcomes. Objectives are what you want. Outcomes are what you got.

Issues

Oftentimes overlooked, Issues are imperative to understand if you’re trying to achieve your objective or goal.

Why? Because they are what’s standing in your way of success.

Specifically, issues are the obstacles between the current state of affairs (“where we are today”) and the desired state of affairs (“where we want to be”). You might think of Issues in the area between your Objectives and your Outcomes.

They’re important to articulate precisely because they focus your strategies. Issues – often referred to as Problems – should be written as a problem.

For example, ‘Turnover’ is a single word, it’s not a problem. Write the phrase as a specific, real problem: ‘We have an abnormal number of staff leaving unexpectedly.”

You can further divide issues into two types: perceptual and environmental.

Perceptual issues are what people think or believe. While perceptions are real, they are not necessarily accurate.
Environmental issues are why an audience thinks of believes as they do. They provide background or context. Environmental issues fall into sub-categories, for example: societal, economic, situational, political, logistical or competitive.

If you’ve ever done a SWOT analysis, you understand issues can divided further into internal (inside an organization) or external (outside the organization).

Strategies

This is probably the most confusing part. How many plans have you read where an objective sounds like a strategy, or vice versa?

Generally, a strategy defines how an organization will achieve its objectives and goals.

The key words is ‘how’ – but not too specific so they sound like tactics (the ‘what’).

Strategies tend to focus on one of two areas:

They focus on a specific area
- Example: Hire 10 customer facing staff
They focus on addressing a specific issue
- Example of issue: Customer scores describing our interactions have fallen by 12%
- Example of strategy: Hire 10 customer facing staff

Notice they could be the same type of strategy.

This is why I’ve always preferred to write strategies as a means to address specific problems. If you don’t address or remove the problem, you won’t be successful. Also, if you write a strategy in a way that directly addresses an issue, the strategy will never sound like a goal or an objective.

That said, remember strategies only do one of three things to the problem:

They eliminate or neutralise the problem.
They minimise the problem.
The put the problem into context.

Let’s be honest. It’s not always so clear and easy to have one strategy removing one problem. Sometimes you may need a group of strategies to address a variety of issues. Or, one issue may need to multiple strategies to adequately address it. Or, one strategy might address multiple issues.

Finally, “strategy” often gets muddied with strategic thinking, strategic planning or even how strategies change by levels in an organisation.

Go here for Strategic Thinking.

Watch this video for Strategic Planning.

Go here for the Three Basic Levels of Strategy.

Tactics

A tactic is a specific step of action, planned and implemented to make a strategy operative, if not meet the organisation’s objectives and measurement.

Compared to the other elements here, tactics are short-term. They are actionable: specific teams or people are assigned for accountability.

Tactics often have a vendor, a budget and a due date.

If you can’t determine the difference between a strategy or tactic, ask yourself this. Can you put a price tag on it? If so, you have a tactic.

One Final Point Overall

Depending upon what level you are as the developer of plans requiring these terms:

Gather as many good old plans as you can. Determine what’s good in old plans vs. what’s bad in old plans. This gives you context on how to create the right type of plan, including how to use goals, objectives, strategies and tactics in your company’s vocabulary.

Talk to as many people as possible. Aspects on the top of the inverted pyramid require discussion with senior leadership. Those at the bottom require conversations with people who will physically do the work.

Ask for constructive, specific feedback. In other words, ask: what will work, and why? Even more important, What won’t work as written in the plan – and how would you recommend I improve it?

Keep eyes and ears open. Be open to any reasonable suggestion or change. At the same time, be sensitive to those people who may not be 100% behind your plan. At the very least, you need them to execute the tactics to ensure a successful plan.

If this isn’t enough for you, here’s another article that goes into even more depth: The Differences between Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics.

Thoughts, questions or disagreements? Bring’em on! Please add your comments below.