Within a few weeks into your fiscal year, your company offsite fades to a distant memory as the daily grind truly begins. Beneath your shiny new strategy and lofty quarterly objectives lie your team’s Tactics, the daily action items, tasks, or to-dos that power the broader objectives of the team. When to-do lists are overwhelming, it’s all too easy to forget how smaller projects or daily tasks contribute to the greater goals of the team.

Enter: Tactics with Elate.

Elate’s Tactics help you track the tactical work, tasks, projects, or to-dos that powers each objective in your strategic plan, helping you connect the tactical work to your company’s overall strategy.

Every Elate customer has a version of Tactics. Elate also offers the Actions package - a more advanced way to track and report on Tactics within Elate. This article will cover how to best implement Tactics both without and with Actions.

To add a tactic to an objective, navigate to any objective. Beneath the Outcomes section, you will see a Tactics section. Select the blue +Add Tactic button.

You will then be prompted to name your tactic. Once you have entered a name, hit the blue Submit button in the bottom right corner.

You will now see your tactic in the Tactic section on the objective details page!

All tactics are measured by a progress bar, from 0-100% completed. Once you’ve created your tactic, you can update it to show your progress! If you hover your mouse over the 0 under the Current tab, you'll see a pencil icon.

Click the pencil icon and type your 0-100 number for how complete this tactic is. You can hit Enter or click anywhere on the screen when you are done. Your tactic will now reflect the number you entered.

When you create a tactic, you are automatically made the owner. You are able to easily change ownership of the tactic if needed from the objective details page.

Under the Owners section of the tactics, select the circle with your initials or picture to change ownership. From here, use the dropdown to unassign and/or assign owners/co owners.

To see more information about a tactic, click into it from the objective details page. When you click into it, you'll be taken to the tactic details modal. On this page, you'll be able to see the owner(s) of the tactic, the duration, the team responsible, and tags. You're able to update any of these fields by clicking into the respective boxes.

On the right hand side you will see a Tags box. You are able to click into this box and select the appropriate tag for your tactic the same way you do for objectives! For more information on tags in Elate, check out our Guide to Tags!

Similar to how you are able to update the tactic on the objective details page, you are able to update it here on the tactic details modal.

You're able to update the goal with a 0-100 number by clicking into the current number or the progress bar.

You will then get a pop up allowing you to update the current progress and goal, if needed. Once you enter a number in the Current box, select the blue Update button.

Your tactic will then reflect the update.

The Activity section allows you to leave relevant commentary or context for your team about the tactic, similar to how you would for objectives. Feel free to @ mention any relevant team members here if needed as well!

The History tab allows you to see the history for the tactic, such as updates.

The Tactic Library will house all tactics in the account that are available to a given user allowing you to see how all tactics are doing in one location.

To find the Tactic Library, navigate to the Plan Execution tab and select Tactics at the top.

You are now able to see all of your tactics! Please note that if you have Actions you will see a column for Blockers. If you do not have Actions, you will not see this column in the table.

If you would like to filter your tactics, click on the blue filter icon in the top right.

From here, you are able to select your filter criteria to see exactly what is important to you!

Actions is an additional package offering that unlocks the ability to add Commitments and Blockers to tactics and objectives. If you're unsure whether or not you have Actions, an easy way to check is if you have an Actions tab on your objective details page, shown in the screenshot below Commitments and Blockers.

If you have Actions, this section will outline additional features specific to you!

If you have the Actions package, you will notice your tactic details modal will look different than shown above. With the Actions package, the tactic details modal will show a section for commitments and blockers for the tactic in addition to the tactic information on the right hand side and the activity log and history.

Commitments for tactics are steps that you will be taking to complete this tactic.

To add any commitments for your tactic, click the gray +Add Commitment button next to Commitments.

When you create a Commitment you will automatically be assigned to it. There will be a circle with your initials or picture next to the due date. To change the owner, simply click that circle and select the appropriate owner using the dropdown.

Blockers are anything that is stopping you from accomplishing this tactic.

To add a blocker, select the gray +Add Blocker button next to Blockers.

When you create a Blocker, you will automatically be assigned to it. There will be a circle with your initials or picture next to the due by date, as shown in the above screenshot. To change the owner, simply click that circle and select the appropriate owner using the dropdown. You're able to change the due date by clicking the date and selecting the appropriate due date.

Once you complete your commitments and blockers, select the circle next to each of them to mark them as complete.

If you have the Actions package, you will notice that you have an Actions tab on the objective details page.

This tab will show you all commitments, blockers, and tactics in one view.

In addition to adding commitments and blockers to tactics, you are also able to add commitments and blockers to objectives!

To add a commitment or a blocker to an objective, select the appropriate button using the blue +Commitment or +Blocker button.

In this example, we'll be adding a commitment. You will be asked to give it a description, assign a team responsible, an owner, and select a due date. Once you're done, select the blue Add button.

You will then see your commitment or blocker on the Actions tab of the objective! To resolve commitments or blockers on objectives, select the 3 dot menu next to the appropriate one and select Complete.

On team pages, you will see a tab at the top called Actions. If you select that, you are able to see all actions (tactics, commitments, and blockers) that team owns and actions that team relies on. In the screenshot below, we are currently viewing Actions We Own for the Marketing team. These are actions this team is responsible for completing or resolving.

Using the dropdown, we can change this to Actions We Rely On. These are actions on this team's objectives or tactics that other teams are responsible for completing or resolving. In this example, these are the actions owned by other teams that are on Marketing team objectives; marketing is relying on those teams to complete or resolve their actions.

Q: Is there a way for me to see all tactics, commitments, and blockers assigned to me?

A: Yes! If you navigate to your home page using the panel on the left hand side, you will be able to see all objectives, tactics, outcomes, commitments, and blockers! If you don't have Actions, you will still see all objectives, tactics, and outcomes assigned to you!