What is the difference between strategic, tactical, and operational planning?

Although similar, strategic, tactical, and operational planning are not the same thing. They are ideas that complement each other, working together so that the organization can achieve its objectives. Therefore, knowing each of them is essential to have a company prepared for the next steps.

If you have questions about this topic and want to know more, be sure to read this post. Here, you will understand once and for all the differences between strategic, tactical, and operational planning. Check it out!

What is strategic planning?#

To make it easier to understand these concepts, you can think of them as a pyramid or a waterfall, where the effects of one spread to the others. At the top is strategic planning, since he is the head of the company. It is the company’s leaders who decide the long-term objectives, between 3 and 10 years, considering both internal and external factors - there are several tools that are interesting to assist in this process, with the SWOT analysis being one of the most popular.

As it is the part of the company where the objectives are made, it is necessary to be very careful. The goals must be clear and, preferably, with a very well defined period. Imagine, for example, that at a meeting the company discovers service problems. Based on this, leaders can devise new strategies to increase customer satisfaction by 30% over the next 3 years.

How to do strategic planning?#

As we mentioned, the first step in strategic planning is through meetings with company leaders, bringing in other key departments, such as finance and legal departments, for example. As these meetings are planned for the long term, there is little point in holding them with a high frequency - the ideal is to separate them between one trimester and the next.

It is a very important meeting from the point of view of market trends, public behavior, and other factors essential for decision-making. The focus of these meetings is to think about how the company will position itself in the market in the coming years and the steps necessary to get there.

What is tactical planning?#

At a level below the pyramid is tactical planning, where the idea is that it takes what was defined in strategic planning and unfold it to each department of the company. Thus, the leaders discuss what will be done to help the brand achieve certain objectives. This is a decision that is taken in the medium term, between 1 or 3 years, to break down strategic planning and take the first steps to put it into practice.

Following our example of the company with service problems, one department can guarantee the objective that customers are served in a maximum of 1 day, while another sector optimizes the workflow, ensuring fewer errors and calls that burden the service.

How to do tactical planning?#

Unlike strategic planning meetings, the tactical plan is much more intimate and direct. As it is the first step to enter the company’s routine, it is necessary to think about the integration of the team. After all, your most active participation starts here. This means that managers and heads of operations must talk to the teams, explaining in detail why the changes are happening and why this is positive both for them and for the organization.

It is also when the skeleton of operational planning begins to be made, with as much detail as possible of who should do what and in what way.

What is operational planning?#

At the base of the pyramid is operational planning, focused on short-term actions — usually between three and six months — that help achieve tactical and strategic objectives. The idea is to define methods, processes, tools, people, activities, and everything else that is necessary to achieve the objectives of the previous plans.

Still in our example, operational planning is a set of tasks and activities that streamline service or production, such as hiring a management and automation system. It’s about answering the question of what can be done on a daily basis to serve the customer faster.

How to do operational planning?#

Operational planning is the organization’s daily routine, and therefore, it is necessary to ensure that what was established at the tactical level will be fulfilled with the highest possible productivity - for this reason, ensure that you have used monitoring metrics. In everyday life, the biggest focus is on communication, so that everyone knows what needs to be done immediately.

For example, in the work of an agency it is common for one task to depend on the other, and for this reason, the ideal is that this should be organized automatically. Once a collaborator finishes, the product is already submitted for approval and, when it occurs, the next one begins immediately. In other words, to do operational planning is to optimize the workflow.

What tools can help?#

To facilitate this process, there are several tools and solutions that can help with planning at all three levels. Check out some of them:

• PDCA cycle — great for tactical planning, involves the plan, do, check, act cycle (plan, do, verify, and act, respectively);
• 5W2H method — from English, involves asking 7 questions to plan a normally operational action: what? Why? Who? How? When? How much and where? ;
• SWOT analysis - also in English, is a way of evaluating the company’s strengths and weaknesses, in addition to opportunities and threats in the market;
• flowcharts — help to visually represent the procedures necessary to achieve the objective;
• software — assist in the control of tasks and communication, in addition to automating the process as much as possible and organizing files.

As has become clear, strategic, tactical, and operational planning are fully interconnected and interdependent — that is, what happens in one influences the next. However, this relationship also occurs in the opposite direction, and for this reason, as important as giving feedback to the team is to receive, so that the information makes the opposite sense and reaches the business leaders. The experience of employees at a lower level can help guide decisions in the future.

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