Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution [Hardcover]

Robert Simons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2010

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“While leaders cannot always have the right answers, they must know how to ask the right questions to drive strategy. Simons captures the power of this leadership approach in a highly inspiring and engaging way. It is essential reading for experienced managers as well as for everyone new to a leadership role.”

Kasper Rorsted, CEO, Henkel Germany


“Simons’s book is a concise reminder of the critical questions that successful CEOs must constantly ask themselves in a rapidly changing world.”

John Rowe, Chairman and CEO, Exelon Corporation


“Seven Strategy Questions recognizes that every business creates value for customers differently, and sets out a useful framework for challenging strategic assumptions and gaining focus. The book provides invaluable insight for any business leader.”

Ron Williams, Chairman and CEO, Aetna Inc.


“I highly recommend this book as a must-read for CEOs and other senior executives. Simons has distilled the essence of competing and winning in the marketplace down to seven hard-hitting, high-impact questions that all of us should have in mind as we manage in the unpredictable and much-less-forgiving ‘new normal.’”

Nils Andersen, Group CEO of A.P. Møller-Maersk


"Simons provides a remarkably insightful path to clarity in defining and executing strategy, guiding us away from distractions and worse. Though closing with a question about what keeps you up at night, this book will help you sleep better."

Arne M. Sorenson, President and COO, Marriott International

About the Author

Robert Simons is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. For twenty-five years, he has taught accounting, management control, and strategy implementation courses in the Harvard MBA and Executive Education programs. His research has been published in journals including Sloan Management Review and Strategic Management Journal.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press; 1St Edition edition (November 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 142213332X
• ISBN-13: 978-1422133323
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.9 x 8.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #242,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars How to think about strategic execution. December 6, 2010

By David C. Smith

Format:Hardcover

If you are looking for a book on how to develop your company's strategy - this isn't it. Yes, it is important for a company to spend time and effort to formulate their strategy, but execution of the strategy is often given less thought and planning. The seven questions in this book get you thinking about execution, which is the reason you have a strategy in the first place. The questions are presented as chapters and include the following topics; Customers, Core Values, Performance Measures, Boundaries, Tension, Commitment, and Uncertainty. While all the chapters of the book are well presented I found the two related to performance variables and core values to be the most interesting.

Performance measures are often presumed within an organization rather than an area that is continually analyzed for impact and support of the company's overall strategy. Managers may measure certain variables because that is the norm or expectation within a company without a clear understanding of which variables are actually the most important and how they are linked to the company's overall strategy. The chapter related great examples from large organizations like Citibank, Marriott, and Home Depot but I think a basic example of this type of presumed measurement is sales management reporting. Sales managers have all sorts of variables to measure; dollars, customer interaction, pipeline growth, deal closure time, and so forth, and will often jump from activity based reporting to performance reporting without a clear relationship of how and what measures relate up to the strategy of the company. Their intentions are good ("we want better results") but their performance measures may not compliment and support the overall strategy. Without strategic performance variables that guide all levels of management a company runs the risk of measurement for measurement sake or worse, contradictory execution. The questions related to the performance variables and how to build accountability for these can guide your thinking and help align the strategy and the measures of a company.

The core values of a company should flow in and around the organization like the weekends sports scores, last night's reality TV, or the major client win by the home office. In other words, they should be openly discussed and evident in daily activities. The values should also translate directly back to the prioritization of the company; either the employees, customers or shareholders. If the core values and the focus of the company are not aligned it will be difficult to make hard decisions and gain organization-wide commitment. The books pharmaceutical examples are vivid on this subject and really make you think about how values and prioritization need to be understood.

While people normally jump to the conclusion that the priority of a company is always the customer, they are often wrong and will actually argue the point that their position (customer is the priority) is the only true priority. How do I know this? I was reading the chapter on the question of core values supporting a company's focus (shareholders, employees or customers) while I was traveling during the Thanksgiving holiday. I had several people give me their unsolicited opinions about why a company should focus on one versus the other (for example customer rather than employee) just be seeing the chapter title. I guess they were reading over my shoulder and couldn't resist the chance to weigh in on the subject. You know you are reading a good book when strangers strike up conversations just based on the chapter title.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in strategy and how to resolve that strategy into execution.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent set of questions for identifying the strategic issues in any business November 16, 2010

By John Gibbs TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Executing strategy successfully requires tough, often uncomfortable, choices based on simple logic and clear principles, according to Harvard Business School Professor Robert Simons in this book. However, the correct solutions to complex business problems are different for every business. That is why he wrote the book in the form of simple questions designed to help the reader focus on the key issues that underpin important decisions.

The questions which the author proposes really do get you thinking. There are many different creative possibilities for identifying the "primary customer" of a business, an identification on which you need to base the allocation of resources. There is no one right answer to the prioritization of customers, shareholders and employees, but you need to know whose interest comes first when facing difficult trade-offs. There are many different things about your business which can be measured, but you need to identify a small number of metrics that really are critical to your business success.

Strategic boundaries need to be identified to control strategic risk. An appropriate level of creative tension needs to be cultivated in order to sustain innovation. You need to identify whether your business success is based more on employees' self-interest or co-operation, and set your policies accordingly. To ensure that your business adapts appropriately to change, you need to keep the organization focused on the critical strategic uncertainties.

Most strategy books focus primarily on external marketing strategies. This one focuses more on internal management issues. It is clear, easy to understand, relatively short (around 180 not-very-dense pages) and a pleasure to read, and if you are involved in the management of a business almost every page contains something that will set you thinking about how you could be doing things better. At first I thought the questions were a bit unrelated to each other, but by the end I was convinced that the author's questions really are an excellent set of questions for identifying the strategic issues in any business.

I bought this book as soon as it became available because I am interested in business strategy; however, you are going to enjoy reading the book even if strategy is not your thing. This is not a typical business book in which the author tells you about some clever theory that he or she has devised which may or may not be helpful to your business; it is a book which asks you a series of compelling questions and gives you some guidance to help you do your own thinking and devise your own clever theories.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for the senior manager toolkit October 29, 2010

By Rod Jahner

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Robert Simons' latest book is not only a winner, it is a must read AND implement for any senior manager.
Finally a straightforward guide for leaders that does not promise a magic bullet, but rather identifies the critical questions that they must continually ask. If 15 years of training and executive development has taught me anything, it is that everything changes and management often does not recognize risk before it is too late. I recommended this book to five of my President/CEO friends immediately.
Amazon allows you to read the introduction for free. Take five minutes to do so and you will be hooked.