Strategic vs. Tactical Problem Solving

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Today, we're going to be talking about the difference between strategic and tactical thinking. Distinguishing the difference between the two is really important because when we deal with strategic and tactical thinking, we wanna take a look at what that really means. We are going to use our 4Q&A to deal with this topic because the difference between these two things is a strategic problem. Remember, we solve strategic problems using our 4Q&A. So, how do we solve tactical problems? First, let's talk about the difference. The difference is, if we take a stat like new patients over the course of, let's say, six or seven months, we wanna understand the difference between strategy and tactic. So, the strategic view is, what is the change over time? In other words, what is the trend?

Now, if you look at this trend, it looks like it's slightly up into the right, but only ever so slightly because we have such strong variations in three, four, and six in those months here where they drop, and we have such heavy months of growth at two and five. So, that's our strategic view. A tactical view says, let me take a month that was really poor. Let me take a month that was really strong. Let me understand what was done in each of those months so that I can see where the disconnect is. I want to understand, what went so wrong in month three. Was it environmental? Was it something we didn't do that we were doing in month two? Is what we did in month five a product of what we did in month four? So that tactically I can say, "Okay. In here, I want to reinvest whatever ad dollars or marketing dollars I have into number five," or if it's a case manager thing, if I implemented a new script at the end of month four that had an impact in month five, that's a tactical approach that I want to make sure was maintained because it looks like since six and seven we had a decrease. This is where we want to understand exactly how to solve the difference between these tactical and strategic problems.

In a strategic setting, the 4Q&A really works because we can see strategically the problem is, trend of new patients is too small, right? It's not positive enough. We'd like to see it growing maybe more aggressively like that. The opportunity is this difference. What is the difference in dollars between what I'd like to be at and where I am at right now? This is my opportunity to say, if I was at this curve, I'd be at $50 or at a different curve, I'd be at $20. Now the difference is $30 and I can say the benefit here is a $30 per new patient bonus. These are just random numbers, but this gives me an opportunity to put dollar value assigned to it.

In this case, we can assign a few things to difficulty. For now, the major difficulty is the variation in the data. It's really difficult to understand what worked, what didn't work, and how to make an intelligent decision as to what worked and what didn't, and what can create a strategic change to move us forward. Generally, the approach here when it comes to this strategic problem is you want to get at least two to three and you want to put the staff responsible for this stat in charge of coming up with this 4Q&A and especially the approach. Remember, we want at least two, if not three, different ways of solving this problem. It could be your case managers or if it's new patients, your PRCAs or your marketing team, has to come up with new ways to create new patient flow.

There may be some examples of months where things were going very, very well. We want to leverage those months. So this is an opportunity for a PRCA, for a marketing team to say what worked and how can you double down on that, right? Instead of coming up with new ways to bring in new patients, which oftentimes can be a struggle, we can find examples where we know certain things were working. So let's find out what those things were and let's double down on that.

In this case (referring to the example in the video), if I look at months two and five and I want to figure out what worked and what didn't work. We need to utilize a more tactical version of this 4Q&A and we call that a D map. In the D map we're going to do the determination of the problem. So this is very much like the P here in 4Q&A. We're going to figure out what the problem is. We're going to figure out what we're trying to determine. We're going to try to figure out what it is we're trying to tactically handle. This is where they're going to say something like months two and five were strong and how to increase that result. In terms of measuring, that's where we're going to say, month two was X, month five was Y, and then maybe take an average of the rest so that we can say, "Yeah, the rest of the months were kind of low. That's where I was and so, this X and Y is where I want to be." The assess and prevent. This is important, right? We have determine, measure, assess and prevent. In assess, or in address, this is where we're going to assess and address. This is where we're going to say, "Okay, how am I going to apply X and Y to my average? How am I going to take these powerful months and apply them to my week average?" That's how I'm going to fix the existing issues tactically.

So, the question is in P, prevention. How do I, going forward, make sure that X and Y don't get replaced by Z? How do I make sure that this result that I got in months two and five maintain over the long haul and I don't start trailing back into this low average? That's how we differentiate the 4Q&A to the D map, right? The 4Q&A is our strategic view and the D map is our tactical problem-solving solution. 4Q&A is great on the strategic level with managing staff, D map is great to give to your tactical teams. These are like your Navy SEALs. Give them the opportunity to figure out how to, on the ground level, do the best possible job they can and then review it with them. This will give you the structure as a leader to be able to very clearly understand what's going on and the best way to solve it.