If you find my banging on about strategy and tactics boring please be consoled by the fact that you are one of a majority of policy-makers in the world today. I say that by way of explanation not shaming. (Shaming as a basis for getting people to do the right thing is as dead as the proverbial Dodo.) The tragedy is that Strategy is rapidly going the same way. Why? One word gives the clue: Hurry. Hurry up, hurry down, hurry along. Strategy and hurry are inimical bedfellows. Are you being screwed by ‘hurry’?
Of course you are. I asked a religious monk some fundamental questions recently. His apologetic reply was that he was too busy to answer them. Precious little chance of salvation, then, I assume. So what is the evidence that we are now tacticobsessed and have lost our strategicompass? American President and the Abolition of War? British Chancellor and the Budget Balancing Bromide? Europe’s Coalescing Rearmament Brigade? Or the dentist’s clarion call ‘Drill, Baby, drill’? You name it, my friend, it’s all tactics.
I hate to admit it but it even reflects in the clients who come to us for help. Their pristine request is always for getting the strategy right. About half deteriorate into Tactical Tips by the second or third session. The immediate is so seductive. Strategy is uncomfortably more like the White Queen’s prognosis in Alice through the Looking Glass. She said ‘jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today’. To be fair to Lewis Carroll, cars were not prevalent then. Less hurry, you see. Now it’s jam, jam, jam. And not just on the roads.
Perhaps the nuclear weapon isn’t the most dangerous thing we have in our midst. Could the real risk be the phrase “Not today’s problem”? Because strategy may seem to be something we can put off until the grouse shooting starts and we have long, leisurely dinners to discuss it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Strategy precedes tactics or we have chaos.
To be fair to President Trump he has his strategy right over Greenland. The problem is that it’s not the strategy the rest of the world needs.
That’s why we’d better – swiftly – get our tactics right about it.
That, or strategy will become redundant.
For heaven’s sake prevent that before it is too late.
Good morning
John Bittleston
28Mar25 Peter Foster FT article “The curse of tactical government” is interesting.
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29 March 2025
