Tactical Deployment: The Real Strategic Plan

Now that we’re five months into the year, it’s safe to say that most of us have long-abandoned our New Year’s Resolutions. Whether we were hoping to lose weight, get better sleep or save more money, we probably forgot about our 2018 missions just about as soon as the new year started. This is not due to laziness or lack of time, however, but because we did not establish a tactical plan for meeting our goals.

 

Take, for example, the goal of trying to lose weight. If your resolution was to get healthier and shed some weight, but you did not own a scale or establish a workout regimen, it would have been nearly impossible for you to achieve any real results. Without a tangible goal in mind, complete with steps for how to get there and measurements of progress, these visions are useless.

 

To successfully turn any goal into a reality, you need to understand the importance of tactical deployment. This is the practice of establishing specific and measurable plans for achieving a larger strategic goal (learn more about strategic and tactical planning here).

 

The significance of tactical deployment is especially substantial when it comes to business planning, as it could mean the difference between your company reaching or falling short of its strategic goals. To understand how tactical deployment can help your company achieve its goals, let’s look at two companies that each had the vision of improving profitability.

 

This company places a strong emphasis on creating long-term visions for the company to achieve but does not put any energy into attaching realistic goals or measurements to these ideas. Although they make it a priority to “improve profitability,” there is no established time-frame in which to achieve this, no identified areas to target and no outlined steps in place to achieve this goal. The company continues to operate as usual and hope for the best, with no real plan for how to achieve results. The strategic vision cannot be achieved and is ultimately useless without tactical deployment.

 

This company sees much more success with their “improve profitability” initiative due to their devotion to tactical deployment. Working with this vision in mind, this company develops SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound – that create tangible steps to closely follow in order to realize the vision of improved profitability. With these concrete goals in place to address the when, how, who, why and what of this vision, there is no reason this company can’t achieve the results they’re hoping for.

 

Companies of all sizes and types must tackle tactical deployment if they want to realize true success. Whether your organization is looking to grow the company, improve customer satisfaction or boost profitability, the first step always is to assess your business and understand which areas need improvement in order to reach your end goal.

 

Need extra help getting started? The Center offers a free Transformation Planner that can help any company identify which areas to target first to ultimately reach their goals. For further assistance, experts at The Center can work with you to decide how to move forward and put an effective tactical deployment plan in place to finally make your company’s visions into a reality.

Learn more about how to successfully reach your business goals at The Center's upcoming free Strategic Planning event on May 15 from 8:30am to 10:30am.


MEET OUR EXPERT

Ron Quinkert, Senior Business Solutions Manager
Ron Quinkert is a Senior Business Solutions Manager with the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center and has 20 years of automotive sales and manufacturing experience. He works directly with manufacturers in seven Southeast and Central Michigan counties. Ron is a seasoned professional with expertise in team building, automotive product and manufacturing processes, tool design, operational audit practices, procedures and improvements.



Since 1991, the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center has assisted Michigan’s small and medium-sized businesses to successfully compete and grow. Through personalized services designed to meet the needs of clients, we develop more effective business leaders, drive product and process innovation, promote company-wide operational excellence and foster creative strategies for business growth and greater profitability. Find us at www.the-center.org.