Breaking it Down
- Your goals are your 'moonshot statement'—your major WHY. Goals should be shared across teams and departments and usually come top-down from leadership. Lots of goals stay up here as moonshot statements because they're not walked down through objectives, strategies, and tactics.
- Your objectives are generally set quarterly or monthly. They differ from goals in that they're measurable and time-constrained. Let's use a typical life example: Your goal might be to "lose weight;" your objective would be to lose X lbs by Y time. Performance-driven marketing teams are usually heavy on objectives but sometimes fail to connect them back up to the overarching goal.
- Your strategy is your 'how'. Strategy is one of those words that gets thrown around, but we find most teams skip strategy altogether and jump to tactics. In our weight loss example, a strategy would be articulating that you're going to achieve your objective with a focus on exercise, dietary changes, pharmacological solutions, or a combo approach. You would show research to demonstrate why this approach is the right one for you to take to successfully achieve your objectives.
- Your tactics are your 'whats'. These are the actual actions you take daily. For example, using a fitness app, joining a class, or cutting out sugary drinks. These are all tactics for weight loss.
The 3 Most Common Mistakes
1. 🎯 No clear Goal articulation:I’ve been surprised how often this happens: Busy teams laser-focused on quarterly numbers but somewhat detached from their business and market. It’s not necessarily their fault: Leaders sometimes fail to effectively and clearly communicate what the company stands for, who the market is, and what the whole point is anyway. (Or worse still, leaders themselves don’t know or keep changing their minds!)
2. 🔗 Failing to connect the dots between team Objectives and the shared Goal:Setting clear team objectives is great for accountability. But if they’re disconnected from the bigger picture, teams can end up siloed from each other and chasing vanity metrics (ranking! PVs! follows!) instead of rowing in the same direction toward meaningful and shared goals.
3. 🫤 Conflating Tactics with Strategy:If your ‘content strategy’ is a list of keywords or a content calendar, you’re probably conflating tactics with strategy. Many clients jump to tactics because they want to make sh&% happen (fair!) But then they’re pretty much gambling that they’ll do the right sh&%. Pausing to consider the ‘how’ before jumping to the ‘what’ brings much-needed clarity and focus to resource-constrained teams. And, NO, this doesn’t have to turn into a navel-gazing time suck.
Do any of these challenges resonate with you?
