Strategy: a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. (one could debate that strategy not just a synonym for plan, we’ll save that for another time).
A tactic is a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks (fair enough).
So formally speaking the text book definitions from military science and business books goes like this, a strategy is a plan that is executed via a variety of tactics. The military goes on to say that grand tactics are large scale tactics, and grand strategy is the political strategy that provides overall direction to military strategy (i.e. terrorists bad, China OK, Canada Harmless).
Gee, that’s actually kinda boring. So how does this help you? Where is the salient advantage in these pedantic semantics?
First, the common sense is strategy and tactics are interchangeable words for a solution to the problem. Strategy and tactics have a yin yang relationship in defining each other – bigger long term picture relative to immediate small scale.
Stay with me.
Tactical means winning battle today. Strategy means winning the war. But the battle had a strategy, broken up into tactics utilized by each team. But each team leader had a strategy, that was adapted in execution by a strategic utilization of appropriate tactics for the resistance and challenges faced. Yin / Yang. Once you leave the textbook, the only difference between strategy and tactics is your perspective. Boxers and quarterbacks have strategies for minutes worth of action. Political strategies have tactics that take months to execute.
The difference between strategy and tactics in everyday language is simply to show the short term vs long term perspectives to the task at hand. That would make grand strategy where strategies interact, and grand tactics where different tactics interact.
So what? How does this help you? (finally there)
First, conversationally it is good to simply know the effective semantic difference between strategy and tactics. Hopefully your now there.
Secondly, in order to be truly successful, you need to have good strategy and good tactics. You need to understand the role of each.
http://strategicscience.org/strategy...at-you-expect/