Objective, Strategy, Tactics

If you're anything like me, you start January thinking 'how can this year be 'my year'', you may want to aim for a promotion, be seen as a high performer or view this year as your 'career accelerator year'. I believe that to feel like you're achieving great things you need to be really clear on your goals and have clear objectives.

If you're a people manager you'll also probably see January as the month to nail everyone's objectives and have a plan for the whole team.

You can use this tool to write your own work objectives, help your team write theirs or plan how you're going to achieve your career goals.

The idea is to split your objectives or goals into the following 3 areas:

1. Objective
2. Strategy
3. Tactics

The problem with just writing an objective and no more is that sometimes it can be so big that you can't actually measure if you're on track and you don't know what steps you need to take to achieve it.

The simplest way to bring this concept to life is thinking about how a captain would have approached a war hundreds of years ago.

Their objective would be: Win the war.

Their strategy would be: Prepare for the first battle, win it, make sure their men are fit and healthy before going into the next one, then win the second battle etc until they eventually win the war.

And their tactics would be: Send a reconnaissance team to the battlefield before the battle, have archers near the woods, have men on horseback come in from the high ground etc (that's as much as I can recall from watching Braveheart, but hopefully you get the point!!)

The idea with the tactics are that they're things you can write down and effectively 'tick off' as and when you do them so you know you're doing the right things in order to achieve your bigger objective. And your strategy is like milestones to aim towards.

I'm a firm believer that you're more likely to achieve your objectives if you've shaped them or written them yourself, and you have clear steps in place to help you achieve them. So take some time, put pen to paper to write down your objective, strategy and tactics and make this year 'your year'…