I’ve been writing a series of articles about strategy questions so when I learnt that Harvard Business School professor Robert Simons has written a book called Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution, it seems appropriate to include details of the questions.
The Seven Strategy Questions
1. Who Is Your Primary Customer?
2. How Do Your Core Values Prioritize Shareholders, Employees, and Customers?
3. What Critical Performance Variables Are You Tracking?
4. What Strategic Boundaries Have You Set?
5. How Are You Generating Creative Tension?
6. How Committed Are Your Employees to Helping Each Other?
7. What Strategic Uncertainties Keep You Awake at Night?
I haven’t read the book yet but I do think they are an interesting set of strategy questions.
You can learn more at the Harvard Business School blog.
The Five Questions To Build A Strategy
On the Harvard Business Review website, Roger Martin, the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in Canada wrote about the five questions to build a strategy.
1. What are our broad aspirations for our organization & the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress
2. Across the potential field available to us, where will we choose to play and not play?
3. In our chosen place to play, how will we choose to win against the competitors there?
4. What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain to win in our chosen manner?
5. What management systems are necessary to operate to build and maintain the key capabilities?
What Do You Think The Important Strategic Questions Are?
Do you have a set of strategy questions you think a business owner or management team should answer to help develop an effective strategy?
If so, please share them in the comment section below.