To stay ahead of the pack, you must translate your organization’s competitive strategy into day-to-day actions.

That means channeling resources into the right efforts, achieving the right balance between innovation and control, and getting everyone pulling in the same direction.

How can you keep all this on track?

Harvard Business School Professor Robert Simons says that you have to ask seven tough questions to identify critical gaps in your strategy execution processes, focus on the most important choices you must make, and understand what’s at stake.

You now have the opportunity to hear Simons outline the questions — which he says make many executives uncomfortable — in a recent HBR webinar.

To view the webinar, A conversation with Robert Simons on a simpler approach to strategy, please click here.

If you wish to download an executive summary of his remarks, please click here.

To see other videos of Simons presentations, please click here.

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Robert Simons is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration in the Accounting & Control area at Harvard Business School and author of several books, including Levers of Organizational Design, Levers of Control, and most recently, Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution.