Writing Tactics That Get Done

Tactics are the unit of execution

Goals define the quarter; tactics define the week. Once your 12-week goals are set, they stop being useful as daily guidance — you can't 'do' $30k MRR on a Tuesday. Tactics translate each goal into the recurring actions that produce it: the calls, the sessions, the drafts, the shipments.

This translation is where most planning quality is won or lost, because tactics are what actually gets scored. A brilliant goal with mushy tactics produces a mushy quarter. The system's promise — execute the plan at 85% and the results follow — only holds if the tactics genuinely cause the lag measure.

The Friday test

Every tactic must be binary-checkable at the end of the week: on Friday, you can mark it done or not done with zero judgment calls. If completing it requires interpretation — 'made progress on the proposal' — it will be interpreted generously, and the scorecard becomes fiction. The Friday test is the single filter that keeps the whole measurement system honest.

The most reliable way to pass the test is to write frequency-based tactics: an action plus a count plus a cadence. 'Write 1,000 words, five days a week.' 'Three strength sessions weekly.' 'Ten outreach touches daily, Mon–Fri.' Frequency tactics are the workhorse of the system because they convert an intention into a countable commitment you fully control.

• Sales — weak: “Build pipeline.” Strong: “Make 10 outreach touches daily (Mon–Fri)” and “Hold 3 discovery calls per week.”
• Fitness — weak: “Exercise more.” Strong: “Complete 3 strength sessions per week” and “Walk 8,000 steps daily.”
• Writing — weak: “Work on the book.” Strong: “Write 1,000 words per day, 5 days per week” and “Revise one chapter every Friday.”
• Product — weak: “Improve the app.” Strong: “Ship one customer-facing improvement per week.”

Common tactic-writing mistakes

Four mistakes account for nearly all bad tactic lists. Outcome smuggling: writing a result as if it were an action — 'sign 2 new clients per week' depends on other people's decisions; the tactic is the outreach and the calls, not the signature. Vagueness: anything that fails the Friday test. Overloading: eight tactics per goal guarantees a demoralizing score; three to five is the range that stays executable. And front-loading: writing week-1-only project tasks instead of recurring weekly actions — one-off milestones belong in the plan, but the scored tactic list should be dominated by weekly recurrences.

A good self-check: read each tactic and ask, 'Is this fully within my control, and will I know without arguing whether I did it?' Two yeses, or rewrite it.

Tactics are where you adapt

Goals stay frozen for the quarter; tactics are reviewed weekly and revised when the evidence demands it. If you're executing a tactic at 90% for three weeks and the lag measure isn't moving, the tactic is wrong — swap it. If a tactic keeps scoring zero, it's either mis-specified or mis-scheduled — fix the design before blaming your discipline.

This is also why tactics matter beyond the to-do list: they are your lead measures, the only numbers you can directly act on. The next chapter makes that distinction precise, because it's the conceptual heart of the whole system.