Creating opportunities for tactics other than by enemy mistakes Tactics, such as the pin, skewer, and fork, take advantage of uncompromised positions of pieces, and sometimes inadequately guarded pieces. Usually, tactics can also occur during an intermezzo.

If both sides made positional improvements with every move, followed their plan, and made no mistakes, could tactics take place because of the evocation of an incorrect plan? 

Perhaps in that case, at least one of the moves was an incorrect move because it's supporting the manifestation of an incorrect plan (wrong strategy). 


How can one make sure, other than by scanning for the positive conversion of the seven imbalances and looking out for checks, captures, and threats, that an opportunity for a tactic is created? 
What are some tips to ensure one is following a correct plan (such as counting that your plan will become effective before his)?
Theoretically if both sides play perfectly the game should be drawn.  Someone has to make a mistake for the other side to win.  According to that logic, material-winning tactics would not be possible without an error, an unlikely scenario I know.  Or to invert that, if such tactics were possible, by definition a mistake must have occurred.  If you are gaining space, protecting everything and looking for imbalances that you can exploit, I'm not sure there's much else you can do, particularly against someone else who is doing the same.