Tactics

The noise before defeat

There's a line from Sun Tzu I come back to constantly: "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

I love that quote because it names both ways people get this wrong. Some founders pick a clean direction and then never move — strategy with no tactics, the slowest route to anywhere. But the more common failure, the one I see every week, is the opposite: people running flat-out, busy from dawn till dark, with no strategy underneath the motion. That's the noise before defeat. Activity that feels like progress and delivers none.

Tactics is the section where we make sure your doing is actually pointed at something. It's the partner to Strategy — and the two were always taught together, because you can't have one without the other. Strategy is where you decide where to play and which course of action gets your attention. Tactics is everything that comes after that decision: the concrete moves, the small repeatable actions, the work you'll actually do this week to make the strategy real.

This page is about the doing.

Tactics are just strategy, broken down

Here's the clean definition I work from. A tactic is a strategy decomposed into smaller parts — a specific course of action you'll take to put the strategy into practice. If strategy is the theme, tactics are the to-do list that delivers the theme.

Let me make it concrete with the example I always use. Say one of your strategies is social media marketing. That's a strategy — it names where you're choosing to play. But "social media marketing" doesn't tell you what to do on Monday morning. So we decompose it. Set up the accounts. Write content that builds awareness of the brand. Film content that builds awareness of the brand. Each of those is a tactic — a real action you can put in a calendar and tick off.

And notice the difference between a strategy and a business function. Marketing, on its own, isn't a strategy — it's a function of the business. Online marketing, or social media marketing, that's a strategy. The tactics are the specific things you do inside it. Get that distinction right and the whole section gets easier.

Tighten the strategy, then decompose

Before you list a single tactic, do one thing: sharpen the strategy so it's actually clear. People give me a two-word heading — "social media marketing" — and stop there. That's not enough to act on.

So elaborate it. Mine might read: using Instagram, Facebook and TikTok reels to drive attention and share insight about the company's culture with potential candidates. Now there's something to decompose. Vague strategies produce vague tactics. A sharp strategy almost names its own moves.

Then — and this is the focus discipline that makes the whole thing work — don't try to decompose everything. Pick your one or two highest-value strategies, the ones that will generate the most momentum toward your goals, and go deep on those. One useful filter when you're choosing: which strategy puts revenue on the table soonest? When you're being tactical, money in the door is a perfectly honest tie-breaker. Spread your energy evenly across ten strategies and you'll execute none of them.

Tactics that compound

The best tactics aren't one-offs — they're moves you can run again and again. This is where leverage lives.

A favourite of mine: film once, reuse three times. Record a piece of content with a tool that also spits out a transcript — Teams, Zoom, Otter, whatever you've got. Now you don't just have a video. You have a transcript you can turn into blog posts, captions, and a dozen smaller pieces. Film one chunk of long-form content, then chop it into micro-content yourself or with an AI tool, and a single session feeds your channel for a fortnight. One strategy — social media marketing — decomposed into a handful of tactics that each multiply your effort.

That's the test for a good tactic. Not just "is it a thing I can do," but "does doing it once buy me more than once."

Where tactics point

Your tactics don't float free. Each one should line up with a quarterly objective — the time-boxed, measurable target that feeds your twelve-month goal, which in turn feeds your three-year and your legacy. When you finish this section, you'll have your strategic headings sitting on top and the specific tactics underneath each, all pointing at the same ninety days.

And those tactics become the raw material for what comes next. They lay the foundation for the activities side of your operating model, and they feed straight into Habits — the section right after this one — where we work out the one or two things that, done consistently every day, week and month, would see your entire strategy realised.

Tactics, honestly, is one of the more straightforward sections of the Framework. It's not complicated. It's just the disciplined decomposition of the work you've already done into the practical things you do daily, weekly and monthly. Strategy decides the war. Tactics is how you actually fight it.

Where to take this next

If you've ever ended a brutally busy week with nothing real to show for it, this is the section that fixes it. The cure for noise isn't slowing down — it's making sure every action is a tactic that serves a strategy that serves a goal.

You don't need the full plan today. Start by naming your highest-value strategy, sharpen the wording until it's clear, and write down three tactics you could actually run this week. Progress, not perfection.

When you're ready to build the whole chain — strategies, tactics, the quarterly objectives they align to, and the habits that execute them — that's exactly what I walk founders through in The Success Framework. If you want a hand turning your direction into a week's worth of the right work, this is the work I do.

Join the list, and I'll take you the rest of the way.