Every organization, and community, I work with on strategy is very relieved when I liberate them from the inane practice of traditional academic language in the process. I refuse to allow them to waste valuable time debating over the distinctions of: goal, objective, strategy, tactic, and night maneuvers. (I throw in the military reference to "night maneuvers" to inject humor into what is usually a very humorless and uninspired process - and it works.)
What do we do instead? We replace these never-agreed-upon jargon with complex words like: where, why, how, and what.
To be strategic, which is to in plain English is to say, proactive, is to talk about 4 things:
Where do we want to be in 20 years? Why does that matter to us? How do we want to get there in the next 2 years? and What would be wise for us to do in the next 2 quarters (and weeks) to get there?These simple and powerful questions give people a remarkable kind of alignment, velocity, and traction they are not used to in the process. What can I say? It works.
