Why leaders should get more tactical, not less, as they move up

You hear leaders say it constantly: As you move up, you have to become more strategic and less tactical. I see the point, but at face value it’s misleading in a way that causes real problems. Yes, you have to become more strategic. That’s a given. But you absolutely do not have to become less tactical. I’d argue you should be getting more technical as your career advances.

It’s an easy trap to fall for. As you progress in your career, you find yourself in more meetings, making bigger decisions, with little to no expectation of being on the floor more than a few minutes a day. And when you’re in the trap, you will still be slammed with work, thus making you feel productive.

I fell into this trap as a senior operations manager running outbound for a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse. I took the advice. More planning, less floor time. And then a tactical problem arrived: The move to one-day shipping dramatically changed how the ship docks had to operate, and nobody had a game plan. I had very technical area managers (AMs) and operations managers (OMs), but this was a new problem, and they weren’t cracking it.

The ship dock issues were impacting every other department, including my inbound counterparts. The team was looking for answers and getting frustrated by a feeling that their hard work was not leading to results.

Meanwhile I was nearly oblivious, buried in admin work, trying to be more “strategic.” What I actually had to do was sit on the ship dock for a month and learn the process intimately. How the hostlers operated the yard; how the sorter read the hundreds of scan locations; what time of day each specific zip code volume started to hit. Once I understood it, I could build the game plan.

It worked so well I was asked to spread it across the network, which led to promotions and a significant increase in authority.

I carried that for the rest of my career. No matter my position, I knew the floor work as well as or better than the hourly associates performing it. It was transformative. Yes, it was extra work. But I knew what my team was going through. I solved problems they couldn’t, or hadn’t thought of. And I knew when someone was pulling the wool over my eyes, which is a hidden but very important part of this.

So how do you balance the two? How do you stay tactical without micromanaging your team? The answer is to simply be knowledgeable. Understand how every system works. Be able to perform the full role of every position on the floor. Know what the data is telling you. When you have the knowledge of how things work, you know if your team is performing the job correctly or not. If they are, it’s easy to give them space. If they aren’t, it’s an easy conversation and doesn’t feel like micromanaging.

The take: When you’re a strategic leader facing a tactical problem — congratulations, you’re a tactical leader again. You do not get less tactical as you get more strategic. You do both.