Strategic vs. tactical

To be more strategic in your role and increase your impact, you must find out what non-strategic work is filling your calendar.

Then, get rid of it — delegate, eliminate, or automate.

Questions to ask

Here is how to distinguish:

By it’s impact

*“Will this work significantly impact the company’s future success or direction?” *Yes → Strategic

By your role

*“Is this work appropriate for my leadership level, expertise, and authority?” Yes *→ Strategic

“Can someone else handle this effectively without needing my input?” Yes → Tactical

By the time you see the effects

*“Is this work going to produce immediate results?” *Yes → Tactical

Examples

Here are examples of strategic work:

  • Aligning tech with long-term business goals.
  • High-level planning and decision-making.
  • Setting the tech vision and roadmap.
  • Working on processes and culture.
  • Building out partnerships.

Anything else that’s short-term, routine, operational, or addresses immediate issues is not strategic work.

Examples of non-strategic work:

  • Attending standup meetings.
  • Solving acute problems.
  • Coding and debugging.
  • Administrative tasks.
  • Server maintenance.

Now that you have a compass, it’s time to look at your calendar and classify each block.

I’ll break down the method tomorrow.

P.S. Strategic work can be tactical at times. Let’s say you take a day of focus to figure out a better way to re-form your teams. To implement the change, there may be 20 atomic tasks that you need to perform. All of that is strategic work.

Yours,

Taj

All writing