"Doing things right vs. Doing the right things"

Stephen Bungay opens Chapter 7 of his excellent book The Art of Action by acknowledging that "Business has inherited from the military the distinction between strategy and tactics."  He goes on further to explain the difference between strategy and tactics, writing that "Strategy was the art of the general and tactics the craft of the soldier...Generals were the planners and soldiers were the implementers."  While the distinction between strategy and tactics is an important one, Bungay emphasizes that there's at least one more important component to leadership.  He uses the term operations, though in the past (see my posts "Amateurs talk strategy.  Professionals talk logistics" and "Logistics wins wars!"), I have called it logistics.  

Bungay is both a military historian and a business consultant, which is one of the reasons that I find his articles and books so interesting.  He uses the World War I Battle of the Somme, which took place between July 1, 1916 and November 18, 1916 as an example of the kind of flawed thinking that leadership is only about strategy and tactics, failing to account for the equally important third component of operations or logistics.  While more than 3 million soldiers (French, British, and German) fought in the battle, just over one million were wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in history.  Planning for the British offensive began five months before the battle.  The plan was so detailed that it left very little room, if any, for real-time adjustments.  Battlefield commanders had to get approval for every change from the plan.  The result was disastrous - the British Fourth Army suffered more than 60,000 casualties on July 1, 1916, making the first day of the campaign one of the deadliest days in the history of the British Army.  By neglecting to factor in the logistics that were required to tactically execute the overall strategy, the British Army suffered one of its worst defeats in history.

Bungay goes on to emphasize that strategy, tactics, and operations/logistics are all necessary if an organization is going to fulfill its mission.  He writes, "Operations are about doing things right...Strategy, in contrast, is about doing the right things."  He suggests that "Rather than a plan, a strategy is a framework for decision making."  Operations/logistics involve making the decisions to achieve the strategic aim, while tactics are the realm of routine, day-to-day activities that often can be standardized to best practice.  I like how he distinguishes between operations/logistics and strategy.  He goes on to describe other examples from military history, and in particular he talks about the Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (his son, also Helmuth von Moltke, but known as the Younger, was a German general during World War I) was really one of the first military theorists to differentiate between strategy, tactics, and operations/logistics.