How to use the bottle-of-wine-for-your-lover concept to make meetings better

“Buying a bottle of wine for your date is strategy.  Getting her to drink it is tactics,” says Robert Muir.

One of the biggest problems with meetings is that some people want to talk strategy, and others want to talk tactics.

I say: “We’ve got to send our brochure to the printers by 4pm today!!!” (that’s tactics).  You say “Wait! Is the brochure in line with our branding?  Is it going to achieve our objectives?  We should check that first – I haven’t seen it.” (that’s strategy).

Most people don’t realise that blending tactics and strategy in the same meeting is a problem.  What you do know, though, is that after the meeting, there’s always lots of actions to be done, and not everything got sorted out.  This problem largely goes away if you separate tactics from strategy.

Here’s a simple take on getting something done:

Step 1: Set your Goal (eg. to have washboard abs before Christmas)

Step 2: Decide on a strategy (Use a nifty ab-machine that folds up nicely under the bed)

Step 3: Execute the strategy with tactics (Buy the ab-cruncher, use it before work, 5 times a week and cut down your daily diet of deep fried oreos from 3 to 1 per day)

Interestingly, that’s how you achieve something.  This applies to:

1. A 30-year old flabby-bellied dad wanting to trim up for Christmas;
2. A 90-year old global corporation; or
3. A 3-person business selling ab-crunchers.

They all use this process.  They may not articulate it like this, but they do.

Here’s the secret: If you can distinguish in meetings between when you’re talking tactics vs. when you’re talking strategy, you can get a lot more done in monstrously less time.   Imagine this: your strategy is effective and inspiring.  Your tactics (which always follow strategy) are seamlessly decided upon then executed, because there’s already a clear strategy in place.

Strategy meeting example: Get big picture, strategic thinkers into a room for a few hours, with a clear goal in front of them.  Park any great “to do” ideas that you come up with during the meeting on a board for discussion later (because they’re just tactics).  The focus here is solely on creating the most awesome roadmap to achieve the goal as humanly possible.

Tactics meeting example: Get your doers together.  Show them the strategy.  Get them to contribute and discuss how they can execute that strategy, for exactly one hour.

(To know more about this, read Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni.  It’s a winner of a book, and will transform how you do meetings, and how you plan your life – by separating strategy from tactics).