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To stay ahead of the pack, you must translate your organization's competitive strategy into day-to-day actions that will
enable your company to win in the marketplace. This means channeling resources into the right efforts, striking a balance
between innovation and control, and getting everyone pulling in the same direction.
How to accomplish all this? Continually
ask the right questions, advises Harvard Business School professor Robert Simons. By posing these provocative questions, you
identify critical gaps in your strategy execution processes, focus on the most important choices you must make, and understand
what's at stake in each one.
In this concise guide, Simons presents the seven key questions you and your team must
regularly explore together:
�Who is your primary customer? Have you organized your company to deliver maximum value
to that customer?
�How do your core values prioritize shareholders, employees, and customers? Is everyone in your company
committed to those values?
�What critical performance variables are you tracking? How are you creating accountability
for performance on those variables?
�What strategic boundaries have you set? Does everyone know what actions are off-limits?
�How
are you generating creative tension? Is that tension catalyzing innovation across units?
�How committed are your employees
to helping each other? Are they sharing responsibility for your company’s success?
�What strategic uncertainties
keep you awake at night? How are you riveting everyone's attention on those uncertainties?
These questions force you
to reexamine the unspoken assumptions underlying your strategy and analyze how it's implemented through your business processes
and structures. Simons' extensive examples then help you understand your options and make the tough choices needed for your
company to excel at execution.
Drawing on decades of research into performance management systems and organization
design, Seven Strategy Questions is a no-nonsense, must-read resource for all leaders in your organization.
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p.3 There is only one path to success: you must engage in ongoing, face-to-face debate with the
people around you about the emerging data, unspoken assumptions, difficult choices, and, ultimately, action plans.
p.77 Every organization has only a handful of measures that are truly critical to the successful
implementation of its strategy.
p.82 These companies expect managers to leverage all company assets effectively to optimize
financial performance.
p.92 You can use the power of negative thinking - the foundation for every code of business conduct - to
develop boundaries that will help you exercise your strategy effectively.
p.106-107 Boundaries leverage the power of negative thinking to create freedom... With clear strategic boundaries,
everyone is free to exercise his or her full creative potential in support of your strategy.
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