Tactical Planning
Tactical Planning coordinates the activities required to achieve the Strategic objectives. The Strategy sets the “boundary conditions” around the tactical plan. The work of the tactical planning is to define, align and sequence the activities required to achieve the strategy.
Plans should not be seen as restrictive and cast-in-stone. A tactical plan should be viewed as a hypothesis about how to achieve the strategic objectives. This hypothesis is then tested through action and monitoring, and updated as required. So the plan should be seen as just one step in a continuous cycle of Plan – Do – Check – Act.
Tactical planning involves some of the same tools and processes as strategic planning eg. SWOT Analysis and Options Analysis. The key differences between tactical and strategic planning are that in tactical planning:
- there are more decisions of less economic significance,
- the scope or impact of the decision is lower…tactical decisions often affect one part of a business rather than the business as a whole,
- there is lower complexity and ambiguity associated with the decision, and
- there is higher emphasis on analysis rather than intuition.
Improvement should be a primary focus of planning activities…not merely maintaining the status quo. This requires the business to:
- Understand the key drivers of performance, the potential for improvement in those drivers, and the impact of that improvement on the bottom line. Key tools for developing this understanding include Driver Tree Analysis, and Benchmarking.
- Identify sources of waste and seek to eliminate them (Value Stream Mapping).
- Identify concrete activities to achieve the improvement.