Mastering Strategy, Tactics, and Logistics as a Leader
Effective leaders understand that accomplishing any mission requires leveraging the perfect balance of tactics, strategy and logistics. All three must be understood and utilized appropriately to guide your team to success and, in the correct proportion, to keep the mission on track.
The best leaders focus on the Mission, and how to best execute the Mission every day. Becoming a master of strategy, tactics, and logistics guarantees that your focus will always be concentrated in the right place.
Recognizing the Interconnection
Strategy, tactics, and logistics work together like three gears locked into one another. If one gear slips, the mission will likely grind to a halt. Understanding the purpose of each gear builds a stronger foundation for better leveraging each element of success.
Strategy identifies the overall objective. It defines what you aim to achieve, highlights the value success will bring to your organization, and outlines the overarching plans for how your team will reach its goal.
Tactics describe the specific actions that will be required to meet the individual action plan phases and team goal execution to impact the overall objective. Tactics are the to-do list for your mission. The step-by-step recipe that takes you from A to B.
Logistics lays out the precise process for when the right people will be placed in the right position at the right time to execute the tactics and complete the strategic objective. Logistics is getting the proper resources, equipment and people in place to fuel the tactics and overall strategy.
A simple analogy is to look at how the coach of a football team guides their squad to victory. Strategy is the game plan, what fundamental changes will we make and execute on to ensure victory: a focus on passing vs running, man coverage vs zone, getting in position to use our kicker’s extra-long range, and more high-level executions. Tactics are the exact plays called out of the playbook, matching defenders to the best offensive players and changing formations for the game. Logistics is putting the right players onto the field to execute the plays at critical points throughout the game and then having the right resources, like gatorade, towels, helmets, cleats and headsets, press box spotters, etc.
When all three elements are present and working in unison, this is a sure sign that the organization is headed by an effective leader and will achieve major successes.
Logistics Ultimately Drive Success
The age-old adage that actions speak louder than words most definitely rings true in the business world. Ideas aren’t worth much on their own. Execution is everything.
The best laid plans fall to pieces when you botch the practical execution. Strategy and tactics are essential, but success is only achieved when the right team, under great leadership, puts the strategy and tactics into action. Logistics is the glue that binds strategy and tactics together to ensure they are properly supported and able to be executed exactly as leadership envisioned they would be.
Create a strategic plan and map out every move. Just be 100% certain you put the correct and sufficient resources into place to enact that plan before you launch the campaign.
Examples of business logistics in practice include supply chain management, distribution, infrastructure, operations, product development and deployment, and customer support and satisfaction.
Expansion and Continual Improvement
Logistics plays a vital role in growth. As a leader, effective logistics management ensures your organization scales in the right way, which includes hiring new talent and expanding the business to meet increasing demand while optimizing processes, managing resources, and enabling seamless cross-team communication.
Focusing on logistics is also a powerful maneuver for fostering a culture of continual improvement. By analyzing existing processes, identifying opportunities for improvement, and encouraging your team to do the same, you will be able to discover and implement incremental changes to your logistical processes for added efficiency and productivity, increasing your likelihood of tactical evolution and mission success.
Why Equilibrium Matters
While logistics may inadvertently seem to outweigh strategy and tactics in the Mission Success Championship, don’t confuse its importance as an excuse for allowing too heavy a focus on logistics to throw the equilibrium between the three out of whack.
Going back to our football analogy, it’s easy to see how a lack of balance in any of the three areas will lead to adding a number to the loss column.
Put top athletes on the field, but send in the wrong plays, and your offense will stagnate. Run the right formation with the wrong personnel, and your defense will give up big plays. Have the right players running great plays against an opposing coach with a better game plan, and you have an upset in the making. Fail to provide water, and your team cramps and dehydrates, unable to continue at full power.
The exact same thing plays out in business. Hiring the right talent or having the very best of tech may be at the forefront of building an effective team, but leading your talent to the promised land requires that you define where that promised land is and outline the exact map your team needs to follow to get there.
In the Art of War, ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tsu wrote, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Properly mix this with Napolean, “An army marches on their stomach.” And we can fully grasp the importance of a balance between all three. I will add a final line here: Strategy and tactics without logistics is an army in gridlock.
Are you ready to become a more effective leader by learning the right way to leverage strategy, tactics, and logistics? Join our Leadership Lab today.
