Every organization needs a clear, coherent strategy.  Whether you’re the CEO, or the manager of a customer reference or customer advocacy program, the organization you’re responsible for needs one. That’s what keeps people on the same page, and keeps you moving forward.

Yet when talk turns to strategy, I continue to hear a Tower of Babel’s worth of confusion. As the old joke goes, ask 10 people what “strategy” means, and you’ll get 20 answers. So here’s a clear framework to help you think about strategy, talk about it coherently with your team, and develop a powerful one that drives success:

• VALUES: What you believe in
• MISSION: How your organization manifest those beliefs. It’s raison d’être.
• VISION: The target. What you foresee your organization becoming. Note that the vision needs to be flexible, to account for changing circumstances.
• STRATEGY: Your organization’s framework for making decisions that will get you to that target. It applies to the entire organization.
• DRIVING FORCE: The strategic area which exerts greatest influence on your organization. This could be market needs (or “customer experience”), products and services offered, technology, method of distribution, etc. To see which area predominates at your firm (and there is almost always just one), ask, “where do we invest the most resources?”
• TACTICS: These are the resources, tools and decision you make to achieve your strategy. Otherwise known as “implementation.” They generally consist of oversight, accountabilities and change management. Without those, you don’t have a strategy, you have an hallucination as one colleague of mine put it (a retired Marine Corps colonel.)

In short simple terms. “strategy” consists of the what you want your organization to be. Tactics consist of the how you’re going to get there.