The book, Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution, guides business leaders in asking the right questions when executing strategy. The first question “Who is your primary customer?” would seem to be a simple exercise but is not for most of us. We want to please everyone who might use our products and services. That’s a noble endeavor but leads to what the author, Robert Simons, describes as “the peanut butter effect:”

If you try to serve multiple customers in a single business, you will be forced to spread your resources across too many functions and units in an attempt to meet different customer needs.

We need to maintain a laser focus on our one primary customer (students? faculty? patrons? staff?) and allocate limited resources in the organization accordingly. We may even need to restructure the organization to better serve the primary customer.

The second related question is about organizational decision-making: “How do your core values prioritize shareholders, employees, and customers?” What are the core values of the organization? And who comes first? At Ohio State, Students First is a core value: when we are faced with difficult choices among constituents, do the needs of the students prevail?

Simons describes an organization’s answers to these not-so-simple questions as the foundation for executing strategy. In future posts, I will discuss Questions #3-#7.