What is a geek supposed to do with a few days off? Start watching Battlestar Galactica of course. In a Season 1 episode, Commander Adama says something like, "I often keep tactical details on a need to know basis."

It got me thinking about the dividing line between strategy and tactics. At work we like to make a neat categorical break between the two, but my understanding has evolved to differientate the two functionally.

A categorical definition would say that you have a direct mail strategy and then each individual mailing is a tactic of that strategy. However, you could argue that the direct mail strategy is just a tactic of a fundraising strategy. Before long categorical definitions have us saying it's strategy all the way down.

A functional definition, says strategic thinking focuses on the ends and tactical thinking focuses on the means. Your strategy defines the problem and how you know when you have solved it and your tactics do the solving. If you are going to seperate these functions across different people or teams, it requires great humility by everyone.

The strategist has to give up deciding the "how" and the tactition has to give up deciding the "why."

This begs the question is this seperation sensible? I think not. Succesful teams will break down tactical/strategic boundaries and work together to both define problems and propose solutions. This means it should be an expectation of eveyone on the team to be able to contribute to both the why and the how.

A team member who can't think both strategically and tactical isn't valuable. Timelines are too short, the pace of change is too fast and what was once the well guarded border of strategy and tactics (accounts and creative) is now a no-mans land one has to traverse to find success.