Strategy is what you want to achieve long-term; tactics are what you actually do to get there.

* Strategy (long-term WHAT) sits above the tactics (the HOW) that serve it. *

The cleanest way to keep them apart:

A maze analogy makes it vivid: the strategy is "get out of the maze faster than everyone else"; the tactic is the concrete sequence of turns you take to get out of this particular maze. Tactics serve the strategy.

Tip: Strategy = destination + chosen route; tactics = the individual moves along it. A brilliant tactic in service of the wrong strategy still loses.

Go deeper:

• Military tactics (Wikipedia) — the "how/where forces act now" sense of tactics underneath the strategy/goal.

It comes from the Greek "strategos" — the "art of leading armies" — and today means a planned, long-term approach to reaching a defined goal.

The military root is telling: strategy has always been about gaining an advantageous position over an opponent or competitor (or at least trying to). Modern usage keeps that core but applies it broadly — business, sport, politics.

Two defining features:

• Long-term orientation — a path you commit to over an extended period.
• Shrinking horizons — in the digital age that "long term" has compressed to roughly 5 years or even less, because markets and technology change so fast.

Tip: The shrinking time horizon is itself a key point: a "long-term" cyber/IT strategy today may only look 3–5 years ahead, because the threat and tech landscape outdates anything longer.

Go deeper:

• Strategos (Wikipedia) — the Greek "army-leader" root the word descends from.