Recently I had an argument in university with some of my classmates about whether strategy or objectives come first in a PR plan. It was a long argument, my classmates even looked at books to find the answer and interestingly enough there were different versions in those books we found.
I personally think that strategy comes first - it's the whole lot, the meta message, isn't it? It's the big picture of everything, the whole sense. Every sense is formed by many little "senses" so to say and these are the objectives - things we want to achieve. What do you think?
You could argue that the strategy is the action which drives the plan to meet the objective.
ReplyDeleteConversely, the strategy could be the plan with a whole lot of objectives laid out to fulfill the strategy.
I firmly believe that an objective/plan needs to be established and then a strategy formulated to achieve that objective. This is typical military style management. You have an objective/plan and in order to achieve this plan, you need actions, which are seen as the strategies.
And I am sure that you have seen this
An objective is a description of the end result you want to achieve (the "what").
Objectives are typically more meaningful if they are SMART
Specific (from where, to where)
Measurable (how will we know when the objective has been met?)
Ambitious but achievable (otherwise, why bother)
Realistic (!)
Timed (by when)
A strategy describes the method by which an objective will be reached (the "how").
I will concede that you can have objectives within a strategy. But these “mini-objectives” can be seen as markers used to measure parts of the overall strategy in order to achieve the whole.
The objective is the overall picture at the end of the day. It is where we want to get to, how we get there, well, that is where we employ our strategy.
Objective: to get home.
Strategy: to take public transport
Mini-objectives: get to bus stop on time, make train on time, wait for bus at destination station, walk last few blocks home.
You have your overall objective and your strategy…you also have your mini-goals which make your strategy measureable and specific, realistic and timed.