Do you know the difference between a strategy and a tactic? You think you do. What about a strategy and a tactic that involves the future strength of your workforce? That’s not as easy to answer, is it? It’s important that you know the meaning of each. To answer this question, let’s take a look back at the beginning of business as we know it. In the short history of the industrialized world, we have made tremendous advances in operating a business. Our financial models have become more sophisticated, allowing us to better forecast and plan our growth. Our manufacturing processes have become simultaneously more complex and simpler, employing technology such as robotics to build products at higher speeds. We are able to make goods faster, cheaper and better. Technological advances, such as the Internet, allow us to manage more information simultaneously, while putting information that used to be the purview of top managers at the fingertips of the average worker. Each of these factors, along with others, has transformed the way we do business today. They have allowed us tremendous productivity gains, which result in today’s consumers getting more for their dollar, euro, or yen. Clearly there are more gains to be had from all of these areas, but the last frontier in the big bang of productivity is people. All of the other gains were achievable, not just as a result of the technology or processes, but as a result of the efforts of the people who applied them. If we plan around all of these other improvements, are we planning to the same degree for our people? If we are going to invest in a new technology for our company, we carefully study the application of the technology in our business. We ask ourselves: How will it improve what we do? How easy or difficult will it be to install? What will it cost? We try to determine whether it will give us a competitive edge in the marketplace and project to the best of our ability what we can expect for a return on investment. In essence, we do a lot of planning. We first develop the strategy by asking ourselves what it will do for us. When we are convinced that it will benefit us, we begin to explore tactics. How are we going to implement our strategy? How long will it take, and what are the ramifications? Strategy and tactics are equally important. A brilliant strategy that lacks tactics and a robust plan for implementation is likely to fail. Likewise, an organization that launches into tactics that have not been strategically thought through is most likely to head down the wrong path without even knowing it until it is too late. In this last frontier, people and companies make the unfortunate mistake of being more tactical than strategic. They may develop marketing strategies, put together long-range budgets and invest in new technologies, but they often fail to develop a human-capital strategy that is aligned with their business plan. Strategic planning for the deployment of human capital can be both large- and small-scale efforts. On a large scale, an assessment of your workforce will help to determine if you have both the people and the types of skills necessary to remain competitive and help you to identify tactics to do so. On a smaller scale, a family-owned business should be developing a succession plan that calculates the long-term goals of the owners and appropriately factors them into developing tactics for a smooth transition. Your people are the organization’s greatest asset. Forming the right workforce strategy now and ensuring that your tactics will carry it out will make for a very profitable future. About the Author Bob Kustka is owner of Boston-based The Fusion Factor, a human resources and management consulting firm. He uses his unique HR experiences to help companies develop people strategies that fuse with their business plans to make money. Bob focuses on recruiting and hiring; management development; and competitive strategy, while keeping bottom lines razor sharp. Interested readers can contact Bob at bkustka@thefusionfactor.com or for more information, visit www.thefusionfactor.com.