The GOST Model: Decoding Elements Of Strategic Planning -

Jhon Purplecrest
2 min readOct 23, 2020

Strategy Vs. Tactics

A renowned ancient Chinese General Sun Tsu clearly differentiated Strategy from Tactics when he said “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. But tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”. Tactics in a way describes ways to achieve the strategy. No matter how tactically you plan your moves if they are not aligned to the strategy business is likely to fail. A lack of strategy, in fact, is considered to be the number one cause of business failures.

Tactics are small or stepwise tasks needed to achieve goals laid out in a strategic plan. The most commonly perceived difference between strategy and tactics is that strategy is long term while tactics is short term. However, the real difference lies in the way in which the goals and objectives will be achieved using tactics and strategy. Strategy concerns the general ways, the overall “how” to achieve the goals while tactics refers to more specific ways of achieving the same.

Benefits Of The GOST Model

The benefit of using the GOST model is that one gets to know the sequence of decisions points. As Horwath puts it, “If strategy is not determined before tactics, there is no way of intelligently changing course when objectives and their corresponding milestones are not being achieved.”

If the right strategy is not in place one is bound to fall for tactical roulette, where the dependence is purely on tactics and not the strategy to reach a desired goal tactic. This will lead to creation of a dead plan and a recipe for failure. Read More

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