Chad has a most excellent post on the relationship between tactics and strategy. I have been talking to a few managers I work with about this lately (including Chad — I was the anonymous cow orker he refers to in his post).
He asserts that "tactics are the new strategy" and I totally agree. He connects the dots between managers who are engaged with their customers and have a visceral understanding of what’s going on (which some distainfully refer to as "tactics" and not worth their time) and the Web 2.0 organization — it’s in a class of cultural behaviors that, to me, are in the same category as transparency, iterative development, disclosing your bottom line, and being fanatical about doing the right thing for the customer/user.
I know a company where the watchword is literally "tactics aren’t important as long as your strategy is correct." The outcome from this attitude is interesting to say the least, and often quite unfortunate. Lots of missed opportunities and wasteful backtracking, to say nothing of the amount of time wasted in putting together that just-right powerpoint slide show to make sure that as many people as possible sign off on your strategy. I agree with Chad that strategy is important, it’s just not the only thing a manager should focus on. (Ultimately, the corollary to the "tactics don’t matter" argument is this: if bad tactical execution screws up your strategy, how can you possibly know if your strategy was wrong or your tactics were wrong? The answer is, you probably can’t.)
I have always coded and I will continue to code, even though writing apps isn’t in my job description. Why? Because I need to have a visceral understanding of the developer experience (also because I like coding). I camp out in Yahoo’s cafeteria one or two days each week, not because I can’t get stuff done at my desk, but because I run into people in the cafeteria that I like to catch up with, to see what they’re working on, and to see how we can work together. This is all tactical but it supports the strategy. If I were sitting at my desk all day working on Powerpoint slides, I would not be nearly as effective. I also subscribe and occasionally respond to every single Y! group we set up to help our developers. I very rarely have the right answer, but this is a two-way conversation, and I need to know the kinds of things that our community is saying about our products.
I am working on a couple of initiatives within the company right now that could be described as "strategic". If you’re worked for a big company before, you know that there’s a big ritual that you have to follow to get ready to launch a big new initiative — once you get buy-in from the execs, it’s then a matter of pounding the pavement to socialize the idea across all levels of the company so everybody is pulling in your direction. So for one of these big strategic things I’m working on, I’m actually avoiding doing a big involved Powerpoint deck (or white paper, etc.) because I have a way of explaining it that takes five minutes for people to understand. I draw three rectangles on a white board and talk people through what we’re doing. I have yet to encounter anybody who has objected to the strategy (even people who initially feel like they might have a lot to lose by what we’re doing are generally enthusiastic about it after I explain it to them this way). The explanation is concise enough for me to tack on to the end of virtually any meeting, I can inject my enthusiasm into the discussion, and I can also address questions that come up on the spot. I couldn’t do that if I had done our strategy as a 20-page white paper (in fact, if my strategy had taken 20 pages to explain and justify, I’d have probably broken it down into smaller chunks).
Step 1: Locate CEO of competing company. Step 2: Stalk him. Step 3: Wait until there’s a lull in the conversation. Step 4: Introduce yourself. Step 5: Tell him that you’re a member of his developer program, so he should 
