Comments on: On Strategy

By: White African :: a white african’s view of the world » Blog Archive » Grand Strategy

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 04:11:20 +0000

[…] This is a continuation of my post: On Strategy, brought about by my reading of the book Strategy by BH Liddel Hart. […]

By: HASH

HASH — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 04:34:02 +0000

I’d guess if you wanted to break it down between military and business it would look something like this:

Strategic = Commanding Officer = VP
Tactical = Unit Officer/Staff NCO = Director/Manager
Operational = Enlisted Grunt = Non Management Employee

Overall though, I’d say my thrust on this topic lies in my simplification of it. I really only think there are 2 types of people; strategists and tacticians. Operational people are generally just tactical people.

I would even go so far as to say that a lot of times the VP/Commanding Officer roles are NOT filled by strategists, but by tacticians. They were put in that role without having the true qualifications.

In all of this, I do have to keep saying that a tactical thinker is just as important as the strategic one. A brilliant strategy poorly executed is just as bad as an idiotic strategy performed brilliantly. One without the other is still going to fail.

By: David Seruyange

David Seruyange — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 03:35:57 +0000

Always interesting to hear the marine in you speaking. I’ll search your archives to see if you’ve written about life as a marine but you must be better able to contextualize what it’s like on the ground in Iraq than us regular “Joe” types.

From a business school standpoint we learned of three roles of “management” – strategic, tactical, and operational. The strategic/tactical you’ve written about sound similar but the operational role is one of the supervisorial position – overseeing the tasks designed by tactician to accomplish the strategists goals. Perhaps there is a military equivalent but I don’t really know the terminology – I’m thinking this would probably be the lower level commander on the ground.

At heart I’d like to think of myself as a more strategic thinker but I don’t know; sometimes my ability to conceptualize the overall picture of something is forfeit.

As far as direct and indirect strategic maneuvres, I like that: the idea that subtlety and details will get you farther than a ram-rod / bull-rush / straight and inflexible approach.