How to build a personalized strategy. Stalagmite and stalactite

The word “strategy” refers to a wide range of concepts, many of which are loosely connected: from algorithms and instructions to roadmaps and declarations of intent.

Hence the common mistake that even those who are used to achieving high goals make — not understanding the difference between strategy and tactics. This is why most of those who think they have a personal strategy are actually mistaken. At best, they take for it tactical plans designed for a maximum of 3–5 years.

It’s not about the scale of goals, the complexity of the tools to achieve them, or the planning horizons. These are corollaries. The difference between strategy and tactics is fundamental.

It lies in the starting point of construction.

If you have been in limestone or salt caves, you have probably seen stalactites — stone “icicles” formed by mineral water dripping from the vaults, saturated with calcium carbonate and carbon dioxide. You may have also noticed cone-shaped growths under the stalactites — stalagmites. Each stalagmite gradually grows and eventually merges with “its” stalactite into a column. This is how stone forests — a picturesque decoration of ancient caves — are formed.
This natural phenomenon also illustrates the difference between tactical and strategic approach to making plans.

The vast majority of people make plans for the future based on the present. They draw on their current status and available resource capabilities to outline goals and how to achieve them.

Figuratively speaking, they build a “stalagmite” from the present to the future. They gather available resources into a “pile” so that they can reach higher by climbing it. Having reached a new level, they repeat the process: they accumulate the obtained opportunities and determine new directions of development.

It seems logical — the available opportunities in the present determine achievable results in the future.

Actually, it is so.

The problem is that this is not a strategy. It is a tactic.

The tactical approach is not without its advantages. It is reliable and sustainable. It allows you to set realistic goals and consistently achieve them, because each step is conditioned by previous actions and supported by a pre-accumulated resource base.

But it is not suitable for building a personal strategy, because it imposes too many fundamental limitations.
First of all, no matter how great your opportunities are, at any given moment they are limited. Accordingly, your choice of goals is also narrowed.

Planning “from the present to the future” results in an increasingly branching tree of options. It becomes more and more difficult to choose the right route (and, consequently, to consolidate the right resources). As a result, your goals can only be short-term — over longer time horizons, the uncertainty is too great.

Finally, this approach requires accumulating resources for each stage beforehand, and this takes time, so your “stalagmite”, although it is wide at the base, will grow upwards very slowly. You’ll have to pay for a solid base with a shorter height — you’ve probably noticed that natural stalagmites are much shorter than stalactites.

So the “stalagmite way” is not suitable for building a strategy, especially a personal one: you will spend a lot of time and effort, and get more than average results.

It can and should be used for planning short- and medium-term tasks, i.e. for moving between intermediate points of the strategy. But to build the strategy itself, you need to do the opposite.

We need to build a “stalactite”.

This means setting a point in the future and decomposing it into the present. To a level that can already be reached with the help of a “stalagmite”: tactical constructions based on the possibilities of the current moment.
In this case, it will not be necessary to spend time and effort on forecasting possible variants of the future, analyzing them and collecting all the resources that may be useful for this or that scenario.

It is enough to find one way that convincingly answers the question “How could it work?”. And, accordingly, limit the collection of resources to those needed to realize that particular scenario.

This is why a “stalactite” grows faster than a “stalagmite” and has a longer length. This speed compensates for potential risks: the time and effort you save will cover the possible losses in case you make a mistake, get stuck or take a wrong turn.

At first glance, this approach is illogical. The uncertainty of the future intuitively seems a shakier foundation for making plans than the reality of the present. In addition, no matter from which end you build them, your possibilities do not change in any way.

But this is the fundamental difference between tactics and strategy.

Tactics are always based on capabilities. They are limited, so the time horizon of tactical goals and their scale are also limited.
At the strategic level, it is the other way around.

Real strategy always comes from desires. It is their scale, not resource opportunities, that determines the limits of what is achievable.

And the grander your desires, the better it works.

For most people, this conclusion is not obvious. Realists enjoy more social acceptance than dreamers: it is believed that matching ambitions with possibilities is more reasonable and productive than uncompromisingly following a pipe dream.

But the world has never been saved, much less conquered, by those who wanted to be like everyone else and settled for the achievable.

On the contrary, all great historical figures, from the creators of global empires to the founders of world religions, initially had no doubt that they were born for a higher purpose. And some really believed in their divine purpose or origin — in fact, these figures succeeded the most. And this is no accident.

You can only achieve outstanding results if your desires lie beyond the horizon of possibility. They are not available to you today — only to you in the future. In fact, the point of personal strategy is to move from the first state to the second.

That is why any personal strategy should be based on the Dream.