When tactics drown out strategy

We've been struggling with a client who doesn't like spending time worrying about strategy. She's quite happy to get right down to tactics - and she wants to argue and debate the merits of them for hours.

We've been trying to get her to see that spending time on tactics without a clear strategy (or a strategic plan, as we call it) is not a good use of her time and will ultimately hurt her chances of meeting her overall communication goals.

As usual, while I was working through the problem, Internet marketing guru Seth Godin nailed it for me.

Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, "I'm going to post this." If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

Here's the link to his article.