Tactics can feel like an interim step, or a stopgap, between execution and strategy. And in a way, that’s true, because strategy and execution often don’t align well. The strategist is highly visionary, looking a year or more into the future, while execution is focused on day‑to‑day work. Because one is long‑term and the other short‑term, these two fronts can clash, impacting overall business performance. That’s where tactics play a vital role.

What Are Strategy and Operations?

Strategy

What Is Strategy, Exactly? A strategy is a plan to achieve a specific goal. It’s designed for the long term and generally involves making decisions about how to allocate resources, like time, money, staff, and areas such as marketing and media. A strong strategy takes into account an organization’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as external factors like market trends and competition. It’s also important for a strategy to be flexible enough to adapt to short‑term circumstances.

Operations

Operations, or execution, refers to the design, planning, implementation, and monitoring of an organization’s daily activities to achieve its objectives. This includes managing production and distribution, as well as executing marketing or media efforts. For example, creating campaign materials or running SEA campaigns. Effective operations play a crucial role in reaching an organization’s goals, such as boosting productivity, reducing costs, and improving quality.

What are the differences between strategy and operations?

As you can imagine, there are many differences between strategy and operations. These are listed below:

Objectives

Strategy is aimed at achieving long‑term objectives, while operations focus on reaching short‑term goals. Think of company growth versus reducing the display cost‑per‑click.

Timeframe

Strategy has a long‑term focus and is future‑oriented, while operations revolve around the daily activities and processes required to keep the business running. In social campaigns, for example, daily budget adjustments are often made to optimize performance, whereas strategy operates more on a QBR (Quarterly Business Review) level, assessing overall impact on metrics like market share.

Flexibility

Strategy is generally more flexible, as it aims to respond to changing circumstances, whereas operations tend to focus on maintaining established processes and procedures. Even though execution needs to be closely monitored, large‑scale changes aren’t implemented quickly within operational teams.

In short, strategy is about setting direction and choosing the best path to get there, while operations is about executing tasks and processes to run the daily work of an organization and achieving short‑term objectives.

Are There Differences Between People Working in Strategy and Operations?

Logically, strategists and specialists (execution) have very different roles, and this can affect how effectively they work together. It’s important to be aware of this, as it forms the bridge toward tactics.

Specialists have the practical skills and knowledge needed to carry out the daily activities of an organization. They must be able to work within defined processes, solve operational problems, and focus on performance. This often requires deep channel expertise and a strong focus on execution.

People in strategy generally have a broad understanding of the market and the sector in which the organization operates. They must be able to analyze trends and developments to design strategies that create a competitive advantage.

These differences in mindset can lead to miscommunication. Here are a few examples: 

Objectives and Priorities

Specialists and strategists have different perspectives and priorities, which can cause confusion about an organization’s objectives and strategies.

Information Gathering

The information used by specialists and strategists can be very different, leading to differing conclusions and decisions that don’t always match operational reality.

Lack of Collaboration

Specialists and strategists can focus too much on their own work and responsibilities, working in silos and failing to communicate effectively. This can result in misalignment and inefficient execution.

Language Barriers

Specialists and strategists often use different terminology and jargon, which can create confusion and misunderstandings.

Translating Strategy Into Operations

For a strategy to be implemented successfully, an organization must focus on a number of key areas: 

Leadership

Leaders must support and drive the strategy. They must be able to clearly communicate the vision and objectives of the organization and inspire staff to rally behind them. Without the right leadership, a strategy will be incomplete and cannot be executed effectively.

People and Culture

People are the key to making a strategy work. It’s crucial to hire and retain the right people and to foster a culture of collaboration and engagement. Without the right people, even the best strategy will fail. 

Resources

Adequate resources, including financial, technological, and personnel, must be available to implement the strategy. Think of tools like a marketing technology stack in the cloud or the right staff assigned to support a strategic initiative.

Measurement

Measurable objectives must be set to track and assess the progress of the strategy. This allows for timely adjustments when needed. Since strategists and operational teams often work with different KPIs, this can cause confusion. For example, business objectives might be measured differently from channel‑level metrics such as ROAS.

Communication

Effective communication is vital for aligning staff and creating buy‑in. This doesn’t just mean informing staff, but also inviting feedback and input. Frequently, communication becomes one‑to‑many, making it harder for staff to understand, ask questions, or provide feedback.

We believe that every person or leader has the potential to be effective within an organization. However, it’s often the areas of resources, measurement, and communication where things go wrong, causing people to be unable to realize their full potential. For strategists, setting this up for the operational teams can be challenging, both due to a lack of knowledge and constraints such as time and availability. This is where tactics come into play.

What Is Tactics?

Reflecting on the sections above, it’s clear that there are significant differences between strategy and execution. This is why tactics are so critical.

Tactics are the glue that holds strategy and execution together. They create synergy between these differing ways of thinking and working. Tactics are the concrete actions, measurements, communication methods, and resources used to implement a strategy and overcome specific challenges and obstacles. They’re vital for ensuring a strategy is executed effectively. Here are a few examples:

An Annual Plan

Most businesses create an annual plan that sets out the strategies required to achieve that year’s objectives. This plan is developed by strategists but executed by specialists. Since an annual plan consists of many activities with varying timelines, it needs to be broken down into manageable projects that operational teams can focus on, aligning long‑term goals with short‑term objectives.

If operational teams have complete autonomy, their focus will be exclusively on short‑term goals, potentially ignoring long‑term objectives. For example, making a process more sustainable might reduce short‑term performance, making it harder for the team to hit their immediate targets. Without effective tactics, long‑term sustainability goals can fail. 

A tactician ensures that objectives, resources, and communication flow seamlessly between strategy and execution. They oversee the projects and translate long‑term aims into short‑term operational objectives, aligning both the messaging and the execution.

A Media Campaign

A media campaign is often used to achieve a marketing objective, for example, increasing brand awareness. In this context, media planning occurs within the strategic phase, focusing on allocating the right budgets across channels.

Meanwhile, operational teams focus on channel execution (such as TV, radio, SEA, SEO, or display).

Each channel operates with its own KPIs, making it challenging for specialists to adjust their tactics for the overall campaign goal.

Without a tactician providing a KPI framework, operational teams might optimize for the wrong metrics, focusing too narrowly on channel‑level results.

A Data Infrastructure

Data is often called the new gold, making a robust data infrastructure a priority. Many companies use CDPs (customer data platforms) to centralize CRM data, digital advertising metrics, and audience characteristics. Improving data infrastructure can be a strong long‑term strategy, but data has no value if it can’t be used effectively for analysis and activation. Here, a tactician ensures that stored data can be leveraged in daily execution, extracting its true value.

An Email Strategy

Many businesses use marketing technologies for sending emails, platforms that enable advanced hyper‑personalization. Strategies often revolve around these capabilities. However, program managers frequently work with sales targets, making it tempting to send mass emails instead of highly tailored messages.

A tactician can bridge the gap by introducing metrics beyond sales, such as open rate, unsubscribe rate, conversion rate, and click‑to‑open rate. This ensures a focus on quality and long‑term impact, not just short‑term sales.

Tactical Communication

Communication is one of the biggest reasons why strategies fail. Misinterpretation occurs when strategy and execution aren’t aligned, or when one‑to‑many communication replaces dialogue.

One‑to‑many communication

One‑to‑many communication often leaves little room for feedback, creating confusion and misunderstanding. An example is an organization‑wide update from the Board with no space for interaction. Here, tactics are crucial. They bridge the gap between strategy and execution, ensuring operational teams understand objectives, methods, and responsibilities.

Group Size

An important consideration for tactical communication is group size. Studies show that ideal group sizes range from 4–9 people for solving problems and achieving objectives effectively. In larger groups, efficiency declines and problem‑solving becomes slower. Spotify, for example, uses a structure of Squads, Tribes, Chapters, and Guilds: Spotify te werk gaat. Deze werken met Tribes, Squads, Chapters en Guilds. Elk van de teams heeft zijn eigen waarde.

Squad

Squads focus on a specific mission or part of a product, working in short sprints.

Tribe

Tribes comprise multiple squads aligned to an overarching product or business goal.

Chapter

Chapters are groups of people within a specific discipline (engineering, design, marketing) that share best practices and expertise.

Guild

Guilds are informal groups with a common interest (e.g., diversity, agile working, or hobbies), regardless of discipline.

This approach allows teams to stay adaptable, scale effectively, and respond quickly to changes in products and customer needs.

Conclusion

In this blog, we’ve explored why tactics are vital as the bridge between strategy and execution. We’ve highlighted the differences between the two, such as objectives, timeframe, scope, and flexibility, and examined how strategists and specialists think and work differently, leading to communication and alignment issues.

We’ve also explained the elements required to translate a strategy effectively into operational terms, focusing on leadership, people and culture, resources, measurement, and communication.

They enable clear communication between strategists and operational teams, making sure both understand the objectives, resources, and metrics required.

Tactics play an essential role in making sure long‑term strategic objectives are broken down into actionable short‑term operational tasks.

With effective tactics, an organization can bridge the gap between long‑term vision and short‑term execution.

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