Goals, Strategies and Tactics in Business Planning

Do you remember back in September when I wrote about the various hats? Well, one of my goals is as I can afford it hire staff to take responsibility for jobs I am either not good at or hate to do.
I have to confess, I am nowhere near being able to pull that one off. At this point, this is not much more than an intention. Right now I barely make enough to pay even one of my smaller bills and keep up with book marketing costs. However, a lot of what I am trying to do now is leading toward that intention. I have developed incremental steps (goals) that are part of the path that will lead to that actually happening.
As I mentioned before, a huge goal that I have in working toward that intention is that I hope to be able to earn my living by writing by April 1, 2016. To get to that goal, I have to create realistic monthly goals that lead toward that end. Just as I have been using monthly affirmations to improve how I feel about my own abilities, every month In order to accomplish these monthly goals, I need weekly goals. And to accomplish these weekly goals, I need to attend to daily tasks based on strategies that I plan to use to accomplish these goals.
Strategies

In goal setting, I think that creating strategies and using those strategies has been the place where I have failed in the past. It isn’t enough to set goals, we have know what it takes to make them happen and strategies are what we do to make them happen. Using a strategy is the legwork involved in achieving goals.

The Difference between strategies and Tactics

Strategy is what we are trying to accomplish and tactic is how we are going to accomplish that strategy.
For instance, one of my strategies for accomplishing the goal of earning my living through my writing is to sell my books wholesale to businesses who would then retail them.
I can use several tactics to do this strategy. I can 1) email prospective businesses with a pitch and link for them to buy online. 2) I can call businesses and pitch them to buy and either take them the books or mail them to them 3) I can go to the businesses directly, talk to the decision maker and sell the books directly. 4) I can set up a website and create an online campaign of building a list of business owners who would buy my books directly online.

It is important to brainstorm every aspect of goal setting, strategy and tactic creation in order to discover the possiblities that might work then determining what I can do now and what I might be able to do in the future. I also have options. If the first tactic didn’t work, I then can go on to plan B and plan  C if necessary. Drilling down and determining what tactics may or may not work in my business may make the difference between whether I reach my goals or not.

Donna Brown is an ordained minister. As Author Cygnet Brown, she  has recently published her first nonfiction book: Simply Vegetable Gardening: Simple Organic Gardening Tips for the Beginning Gardener

She is also the author of historical fiction series The Locket Saga. which includes When God Turned His Head and Soldiers Don’t Cry, the Locket Saga Continues, and most recently, A Coward’s Solace, Book III of the Locket Saga.For more information about Cygnet Brown and her book, check out her website at http://www.cygnetbrow.com .