Strategy, Tactics, and the Trouble with Thinking One Directionally

I read something from Simon Sinek recently that made me smile. He was talking about the difference between strategy and tactics.

He used and analogy about the curious way finance and marketing people approach each other’s worlds.

When marketing people hit a point in a project where finances matter, they tend to say:

“We’re going to need finance’s help.”

When finance people hit a point where marketing is clearly going to be involved, they tend to say:

“We’ve got this—how hard can it be?”

It's a tongue-in-cheek comparison, but it holds water.

Because, as Sinek points out:

People who are strong at strategy tend to know they need help with tactics. People who are strong at tactics often don’t realise they might need help with strategy.

We’ve seen this a lot in leadership teams over the years.

It’s not a value judgement it’s just awareness … it’s what you do about it that counts.

And one of our go-to solutions at Noggin has been deceptively simple at helping people:

Use 4MAT to Travel in Both Directions

We use the 4MAT model (Why → What → How → So What?) to help teams stop talking past each other and start thinking more coherently across strategy and tactics.

It works in two ways:

• For those who live in the weeds—the practical, detailed, “what” and “how” people—we use chunking up questions to pull them upwards into the “why” and “so what” spaces.

  
  

  ("What’s important about doing this?” / “What are we looking to get from this?”)

  
  

• And for those who naturally think in abstract visions—the “why” and “so what” people—we ask chunking down questions to bring them closer to the ground.

  
  

  ("What does that actually mean?” / “How would we do that – what’s first?”)

This allows leadership teams to travel in both directions—up and down the logical ladder.

So, instead of a tug-of-war between visionary strategy and practical delivery, you get a kind of constructive tension. You get coherence. And ultimately, a more robust shared strategy.

The Question to Ask Yourself

So here’s a question worth reflecting on—especially if you’re working through a team strategy right now:

What question would help you most to balance out your natural tendency—so your strategy can travel in a direction that actually helps?

It could be a “why” question to stretch your thinking and create shared context

It could be a “what” questions to better define what you mean

It could be a “how” question to ground your vision in practical steps

Or it might be a “so what” to make sure your big idea actually delivers

Whatever it is, notice where you start—and then learn to travel.