Definition
Tactics are the moves made during a contest — the specific choreography of engagement, the choice of feature to ship, the line of argument to use, the play to call. Strategy is the arrangement of conditions before the contest — the position, the alliances, the timing, the information held and withheld. The distinction is one of level, not of quality: every contest has both, and they operate on different time scales.
Sun Tzu's Art of War is structured around the claim that strategy dominates tactics. The temple calculation of Topic 1, the hierarchy of attack in Topic 3, the form-and-energy structure of Topics 4–6 — all are strategic-level work. Tactics get less attention because, in Sun Tzu's account, most contests are decided before the tactical layer is engaged.
Why it matters
How it works
The two levels operate on different time scales and through different mechanisms. Tactical variables change weekly — which experiment to run, which customer to call. Strategic variables change yearly or longer — which market to be in, which talent base to build, which alliances to maintain. The temporal difference is what makes strategy compound: small advantages at the strategic layer persist across many tactical exchanges.
The most common error is mistaking frequency of decision for importance of decision. Tactical decisions happen often and feel urgent; strategic decisions happen rarely and feel theoretical. Leaders spend most of their attention on the frequent decisions and starve the rare ones — exactly the opposite of what the level analysis would recommend.
Sun Tzu's discipline is the reverse: most of his attention is on what to arrange before the contest, and remarkably little on what to do during it. By the time of contact, the work has been done.