by Dean Zatkowsky

"Strategy without tactics is the slow road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Faced with a product or service marketing challenge, a lot of people immediately brainstorm tactics: "Let's have a sale! We should hold a workshop! Let's do some direct mail!"

At my marketing workshops, I recommend a slower, more methodical approach that simplifies and focuses the problem and its solution. We use a simple, one-page form to identify Goals, Strategies and Tactics.

Unfortunately, while most people know that goals and strategies are important, few receive training in their formation and execution.

Marketing plans are exercises of the imagination, and as with any type of exercise, proper form protects one from injury and improves efficiency of the activity. To help people get comfortable with the GST exercise, I use the following metaphor: Goals are destinations, Strategies are road maps, and tactics are vehicles.

For example, imagine that we wish to get from Livingston, Montana to Jackson, Wyoming. Yellowstone National Park is between the two. Jackson is our goal. Consulting a map, we can see a variety of routes (strategies). Depending on which route we choose, we'll know whether we need a car, a canoe, hiking boots, or all three. These vehicles are our tactics. If we don't have a canoe or adequate hiking skills, we choose a strategy that does not require these.

When planning our journey, we also need to set objectives; these are road markers that tell us whether we're off track. If we travel by car, and we haven't reached the northern entrance to Yellowstone within 90 minutes of leaving Livingston, something is terribly wrong.

I require that attendees craft multiple strategies for every goal, because sometimes a road is closed unexpectedly. Isn't it nice to have a map with alternate routes available?

Sometimes we have diverse - but complementary - objectives; if we want to get to Jackson as fast as possible, we take the car and the best, most direct roads. If we want the most scenic journey, we may choose another path. If we want adventure and exercise, we might take the car to the river, portage the canoe to an appropriate spot on the river, and paddle to Jackson, which remains the ultimate goal.

If our multiple objectives are contradictory - if we want to get to Jackson within three hours but want to see two eruptions of Old Faithful on the way, we may not achieve both goals, because Old Faithful erupts at inconsistent intervals.

The GST process lets us explore a variety of specific goals, then explores alternative strategies and tactics required to achieve each of those goals. Getting these ideas on paper helps one choose the strategies and tactics offering the best intersection of effectiveness and efficiency. Ultimately, the GST exercise simplifies our choices by helping us plot the most direct path to our goal.

I expect people to struggle over the distinction between strategies and tactics, because we want to be do-ers - tactics equal action!  But this is how we sometimes win battles and lose wars - I've seen many a successful direct mail program that increased sales and decreased profits.

It's unwise to jump in the car and take off without a map, but experience tells me that the main barrier to strategic thinking is that few people can clearly articulate their goals in the first place. If you don't know exactly where you want to go, how can you plan the route?  As it turns out, there are simple, methodical processes for goal-setting too. We'll discuss this in future entries...

Dean Zatkowsky is the Managing Partner of Dizzy One Ventures, and the co-author of Two Billion Dollars in Nickels: Reflections on the Entrepreneurial Life, and The Entrepreneurial Investor: The Art, Science and Business of Value Investing.