The Relationship Between an Organization's Strategy and It's Tactics

The Relationship between an Organization’s Strategy and its Tactics

By definition, strategy in an organization is defined as a plan to bring about a desired goal for the organization. Strategy answers the question “What do we want to accomplish?” It is an expression of how an organization needs to progress over a period of time to meet its stated objectives and includes a detailed assessment of what needs to be done in order to meet these objectives. Developing an organizational strategy for a business will involve first of all comparing its current situation to where it desires to be and then stating what is required for the desired changes to take place.

Tactics on the other hand are the specific actions that are used to realize the strategy. In simple terms, tactics will answer the question “How will we accomplish that which we have set out to do in our strategy?” Every strategy needs to be supported by a corresponding tactic or tactics that will help to realize this goal.

For instance in our case study on Zurich Financial Services Group, the organization has given one of its aims as “To be the employer of choice”. This is a general statement of what the organization is seeking to achieve. In order to achieve this, the organization has set out a strategy of attracting top-performing employees and retaining them once recruited. To do this, the company has adopted the following tactics:

1. Providing management trainees with a wide range of skills and opportunities required to grow their careers. This includes developing skills in functions such as marketing, sales and customer service during their induction training. This will ensure the staffs have a clear career growth path right from the time they join the organization and hence increase the likelihood of retaining them in the long run.

2. The organization also offers its staff performance incentives that are not just intended for meeting sales targets but also for helping the business achieve its...