Which one do you use?

                     or

I often wonder when people, organizations and companies are engaged in their daily business routines, how much thought are they giving to what they are actually doing?

I ask this because when you really look at what businesses are doing you really have to wonder; do they have a game plan in place or are they just doing things on a day to day basis without thinking about the long term plan? Reacting to what happens instead of actually having their own ideas about what should be made or what should be happening?

Case in point (an obvious one) - the iPhone. 

Apple (strategy).  Created a product that was sexy, practical, and with extremely useful features.  Made people want it and in the process re-arranged the DNA of the cell phone market by introducing the first touch-screen cell phone (and provide awesome customer service for their product).

Sprint (tactic). Created a wanna-be iPhone - the Instinct (with lousy customer service).

BlackBerry (tactic). Created a wanna-be iPhone too - the Storm (do they have customer service?)

2.  A second point - Twitter

Nothing wrong with Twitter, but for every story I hear about how Twitter is so valuable because it did x, y and z for a business I have 100 other stories of pointlessness (at least).  Twitter on many occasions is the focus of the conversation - who's following who today. . . (a tactic) vs. using it as a tool in your marketing arsenal (blog, website, facbook page, linkedin profile, etc) that supports your short and long term game plan (i.e. your strategy). 

In my experience the focus is more often on the tactic (the little picture) which is fine, if you have a big picture to fit it in.  But when all the talk is on the flavor of the month, (which is often) then the market continues to get average ideas, from ho hum companies, with little inspiration and no purpose.  So at the end of the day you're throwing money, time, and energy down the drain.