I have often found students struggle to differentiate between strategy and tactics. These terms are used in many different contexts and can at times be used to refer to the same thing. But I want to show you exactly how they differ and then how they are similar.
Differences
Strategy
Strategy is basically laying down the goals and making a plan to get there. In sport, this is something like, having the goal to win the season or win the match as well as making a plan to achieve this, such as developing an athlete’s power, working on comradery and selecting the right players.
Strategy often requires a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. The coach might analyse the team and plan to utilise strengths and develop weaknesses, She may also analyse the opposition to identify the best approach to be used in the game to win. Perhaps the team has a weak tackler to target.
Tactics
Tactics are more the simple day to day steps or actions taken to achieve the goal of the strategy. So if you are developing an athlete’s power what are you doing to achieve this? Weight training, plyometrics, how often etc. If you are working on comradery how are you doing this? Are you going on a camp together, eating meals together, doing specific team bonding challenges etc.
In a specific game you might consider the set plays you practice in order to target the weak tackler, or who makes the starting line-up and who you might put in if someone gets injured.
Similarities
Strategy
Given that strategy is making the plan to get to the goal being set it is often confused with the specific steps taken. Tactics are the specific day-to-day steps and actions placed. Sometime this can seem like the plan put in place and they do overlap a bit, but the strategy is generally much broader in focus than tactics. However, strategy must inform the teams tactics. If it doesn’t the team or athlete is likely to end up a bit lost and confused because really they are not working towards anything specific.
Tactics
Tactics then must flow out of the strategy. There is no point coming up with specific actions to do each day or throughout a game if it does not line up with the strategy – your plan for how you will win. If you are just putting your favourite plays together or constantly going to your favourite moves this is likely to not help you overall in the game or long term in the competition.
For example, if you love to serve down the line in tennis and do this all the time with no strategy it may be profitable to start with, but if your opponent is expecting this or loves to return serves that go down the line with a high percentage of winners it is going to be a bad choice. But if the athlete uses strategy to identify this strength they will break it up and serve more to the outside of the court, while also mixing it up with the serves down the middle.
