As an experienced product manager, you’ve probably felt this conflict a thousand times: "I need to be both strategic and tactical, and somehow I need to be both at the same time.” You might be trying to define the product vision, align with the business, continuously discover user needs and still deliver iteratively, at pace. The pressure to be everywhere at once—to lead with vision while staying close to the detail—can leave you spinning plates, and potentially burning out.
In an ideal world we’d carve out the space to be one or the other – either delegating the day-to-day detail out to our teams, or feeling comfortable enough in the longer-term strategy to really enjoy the finer detail of delivery. But we rarely get to work in ideal environments. The truth is, managing both the strategic and tactical sides of a product at the same time is often both a delicate balancing act and a necessary evil.
In this article we’ll take a practical, real-world look at the daily tension between being strategic and tactical, and how you can work towards a world where the two complement each other, rather than being at odds with one another.
Strategy isn’t something you just do once
As a product manager, part of your remit is likely to involve guiding the team towards a long-term goal, outcome, or objective. This could be facilitated by crafting the product vision, defining the roadmap, or prioritising initiatives in line with user and business goals. This requires zooming out, continuously aligning with stakeholders, and an ongoing assessment and re-assessment of market opportunities and customer needs.
The biggest challenge with this is that product strategy (or any strategy, for that matter) is never “done”. Stakeholders change their minds; Market trends shift; New customer feedback or product data comes to light. Therefore, even your beautifully crafted long-term strategy may be subject to day-to-day review due to emerging insights.
This can be genuinely difficult. You don’t want your strategy to be something you come up with once and then rarely refer to again, but you can’t ignore what’s happening in the here and now. The question becomes: How do you keep your strategy consistent, but relevant?
Sometimes, stuff just needs to get done
At the same time, there’s the ongoing requirement to deliver, which can sometimes feel relentless. It’s one thing to define a roadmap and a vision; it’s another to ensure you and your team are actually delivering value against that vision, and delivering it often. The tactical side of product management requires a lot of context-shifting. From working closely with your team, to staying across customer feedback, to ensuring your product is performing and reacting accordingly if it’s not.
This will be a scenario that’s familiar to all of us:
You’re taking part in sprint planning, collaborating on the next design iteration with the UX team, and working with the developers on your team to ensure delivery against the scope – probably all in one morning.
Stakeholders are keen to know how things are going, what’s coming next, and whether it can be done quicker.
The roadmap that once seemed very sensibly prioritised now feels like it could do with some TLC, and maybe even some optionality, to reflect the conflicting demands you’re seeing from all angles.
Throw into the mix that product managers are often inherently problem solvers who like to put out fires and support those around them, and it’s easy to see how we can find ourselves making reactive, short-term decisions. The challenge becomes how we keep our strategy relevant, up-to-date, and the driving force behind everything we do in such a fast-paced environment.
Practical Tips to Navigate the Push and Pull
1. View Tactics and Strategy as Part of the Same Journey
Tactical work doesn’t have to be at odds with strategic thinking. Ultimately, they are all part of the same whole: the day-to-day delivery of tasks, resolution of bugs, and implementation of features should all be part of the journey towards your desired outcomes.
What’s more, delivering “little and often” and getting real working products into users’ hands is the best way to gather data and insights that can help validate and guide your broader strategy.
This shift in thinking can be really helpful: tactical outputs don’t just keep stakeholders at bay. They provide the data and momentum which ensure your strategy is correct and on course.
2. Block Time for Focused Strategic Work (Without Guilt)
To protect strategic thinking, it can be useful to carve out non-negotiable time blocks for yourself. Without this, your day can become 100% tactical – every day. Protected time (ideally with no distractions: no Slack, no email, “do not disturb mode” turned on) can help ensure the strategic thinking is not neglected, even in the most demanding of times.
It’s tempting to flick between instant messages, emails, and “that call that’s coming in right now for some reason”, especially when you know everyone is currently under pressure to deliver. But if you don’t make regular time for strategic thinking, and you don’t make it sacred, it’s easy for the tactical noise to drown out everything else.
The key here is to recognise that your strategic thinking isn’t at odds with what’s going on day-to-day – it helps to clarify what’s truly important, what needs to come first, and what can wait.
3. Trust the Team
If you’re anything like me, chances are you’re responsible to a fault and want to help with as many things as possible, as often as possible. What’s equally likely to be true is that you work with other awesome people who you can trust to get on with the day-to-day without you. You don’t need to be the one handling every tactical decision.
Empower your team to take ownership of tactical execution. Whether it’s engineering, design, or delivery, each team should be self-sufficient enough to manage specific areas without your constant input. The more you can trust your team, the more mental bandwidth you have to focus on strategy. Your team will likely be full of highly skilled, highly experienced subject matter experts who can drive their individual areas, and the wider team, and you’ll build better relationships by not making the team feel like you have to sign off on every minute detail.
What can be really helpful here is aligning often and early with the team on the strategy, especially if it shifts. The more people understand the “why,” the more empowered they are to define the “what” and the “how.”
4. Create Agile Roadmaps That Allow for Flexibility
In fast-paced and challenging environments, rigid roadmaps can be restrictive. The ability to pivot quickly when new information emerges from your tactical activities can be hugely beneficial.
It might seem like a bit of a cliché, but prioritising outcomes over outputs is your greatest ally here. When your roadmap is outcome-driven, the tactics you use to deliver your strategy can be many and varied, and adapted in real-time based on data, insights and shifting trends.
An agile approach to roadmaps—one that allows for re-prioritisation, reassessment, and iterative development—also gives you the flexibility to adjust more quickly. This ensures that your strategic vision can evolve in response to feedback while keeping the momentum going.
Conclusion: Strategy Needs Tactics. Tactics Need Strategy.
Balancing the strategic and tactical sides of product management is hard. It's a mental and emotional juggling act that can feel like you're always chasing your tail. But with experience comes the understanding that both sides feed into each other. Strategy isn’t a one-off, high-level exercise—it’s the invisible hand that guides the day-to-day tactical decisions. And tactics don’t just exist to deliver short-term fixes—they’re the steps along the way to delivering your goals, and an opportunity to refine and evolve your product strategy.
The key is recognising that you are going to be pushed and pulled in different directions. The more intentional you can be about weaving your strategy into every day-to-day conversations and decisions, and the more you can carve out time for strategic thinking even when the heat is on, the better equipped you will be to iteratively deliver value which drives you towards your strategic aims.
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