The Strategic Vs. Tactical Mindset
A look into the balance of today's and tomorrow's tasks
How much time do you or your team spend on the day to day vs. planing the future? .
I would tend to think that for most this is not a binary situation, as we need to be able to have a plan and deliver on it. For this, we require practicing and intentionally using different types of mindsets. Let’s delve into this deeper in this article.
Balancing Today & Tomorrow
Working in engineering demands a careful balance between two distinct mindsets: the strategic and the tactical. Understanding these two mindsets and knowing when to apply each is crucial for successful leadership and team performance. Let's delve into what each of these mindsets entails.
Strategic Mindset
Where do we need to go?
A strategic mindset is forward-looking. It's about setting goals, identifying opportunities, and developing plans to achieve those goals. It involves thinking about the bigger picture and the future direction of the team or the organization, providing a common path for everyone.
An example of a strategic mindset could be considering organizing the company in vertical slices, to define common tools and practices, etc.
Tactical Mindset
What do we need to do?
On the other hand, a tactical mindset is about the here and now. This involves focusing on the tasks at hand, solving problems as they arise, and executing the immediate steps of any strategy. This mindset is required to survive.
An example of a tactical mindset could be keeping legacy money-making systems running healthy, fixing a bug that affects clients, etc.
Problems of Being Stuck in One Mindset
Balancing the strategic and tactical mindsets is not an easy task. It requires conscious effort, adaptability, and situational awareness. To lead effectively, engineering leaders must be able to switch seamlessly between these two mindsets, adapting to the fluctuating needs of their team and the project at hand.
If any of the mindsets is dominant, it can lead to issues on a company and team level. Let's discuss the problems of being stuck in each of these mindsets:
Tactical
Being overly tactical can lead to:
Lack of bigger picture: Without a strategic approach, leaders might become so focused on immediate issues that they lose sight of broader goals and objectives
Lost opportunities: A purely tactical approach might miss out on potential opportunities for improvement or innovation, as the focus is solely on dealing with the immediate issues at hand.
Increased Baseline: Quick fixes might be preferred over sustainable solutions, leading to extra effort of maintenance and the need for extra hands to maintain systems up and running.
Crisis management loop: A purely tactical mindset can lead to a reactive approach where leaders are constantly dealing with immediate issues rather than planning for the future, keeping the team in a perpetual state of crisis management.
Burnout: The continuous pressure to handle immediate issues and the lack of preventive measures can lead to increased stress and eventual burnout.
Strategic
Being overly strategic can lead to:
Analysis Paralysis: Spending too much time planning and strategizing can lead to indecisiveness, delaying important decisions and actions.
Missed details: Overemphasis on the big picture might lead to overlooking important details, which can result in faulty execution of strategies.
Disconnect from the team: Leaders who are overly strategic might lose touch with the day-to-day challenges their team faces, leading to unrealistic plans and expectations.
Frustration among team members: If leaders are always focused on future plans, team members might feel their immediate concerns are being ignored, leading to dissatisfaction and frustration.
The Role Progression: From Tactical to Strategic
As engineers progress in their careers and take on more senior roles, there’s often a necessary shift from a primarily tactical mindset to a more strategic one.
Early Career Engineer (99% Tactical, 1% Strategic): Focuses primarily on tactical tasks such as coding, debugging, and learning new technologies. Their work is closely guided by the guidelines set by the bigger picture.
Mid-Career Engineer (90% Tactical, 10% Strategic): Start to introduce tactical work with strategic thinking to prepare themselves for future work. They are knowledgeable about larger parts of the codebase and product, allowing them to provide input for strategical decisions.
Late Career Engineer (70% Tactical, 30% Strategic): Continues to execute hands on work, but spends an increasing amount of time on strategic tasks. They make architectural decisions, mentor other engineers, align with other teams engineers.
Leaders (30% Tactical, 70% Strategic): Spends a significant amount of their time on strategic tasks. They are responsible for planning and coordinating the team's work and ensuring that it aligns with the company's strategic goals.
Directors (5% Tactical, 95% Strategic): Primarily focused on strategic tasks. They make decisions about the overall direction of the engineering team, manage resources, and coordinate with other parts of the business.
C-Level (1% Tactical, 99% Strategic): Almost entirely focused on strategic tasks. They set the technological direction of the company, make decisions about the use of resources, and represent the engineering team at the executive level.
Summary
A strategic mindset focuses on setting goals and planning for the future, while a tactical mindset concentrates on immediate tasks and problem-solving. However, overemphasis on either mindset can lead to issues such as lack of broader vision or missed details. As engineers progress in their careers, there is often a shift from a primarily tactical mindset to a more strategic one, with leaders and executives focusing more on strategic tasks.
I hope this post has helped solve the long-standing question of what is this person doing in their role. And helps also to understand how successful engineering requires a balance between strategic and tactical mindsets.