If you don’t know, don’t feel bad, you’re in good company because many of today’s business leaders couldn’t tell you either. Maybe the following will help to clarify:

Goals are the desired results that your business hopes to systematically achieve through the implementation of the strategies and tactics. Goals are measurable.

Strategies should answer the question, “How do we accomplish our goals?” It’s the big-picture view (general approach or method) of the entire forest, not the individual trees, of how a goal should be achieved.

Tactics are specific actions (the individual trees) that will be implemented to execute the strategy. A strong strategic plan will assign due dates to each action along with the names of those responsible for executing each tactic.