In the last post, I talked about the difference between being strategic and being tactical. Being strategic, I wrote, is about using the least amount of resources to create the greatest effect.
This definition, however, brings up a crucial question: How do you know when you’re being strategic?
Truth is, there is no simple, universal answer. It changes by the situation. However, one thing is consistent throughout all situations: the setup will do most, if not all, of the work for you. This is what saves you the time, energy, and resources.
Let’s take a very simple example – paying bills. A tactical response to paying bills might be to create a calendar that tells you exactly what bills need to be paid and when.
However, this takes up a lot of work. You’ll have to keep filling the calendar with bills coming up for the next month, and spend time actually paying the bills.
The strategic response says, “How can I do less and achieve the same or more?” With the tools you have available to you, then, you can setup automatic billing, where you setup a schedule through your bank to send money automatically to your billers.
All this requires is an initial expense of time (an hour or two) in setting up the right bills and knowing their amounts. After that, you just have to check on it once or twice a month to make sure everything is running smoothly.
This is a very simple example, but hopefully it communicates the idea here. Strategic decision-making makes the whole decision-making process easier because the real decision happens in the beginning.
The rest of the decisions are simply check-ins to make sure everything else is running smoothly.