The most important question for a business leader to ask.

If you're in business, if you're a business leader, then a really important question to ask yourself and your team is this: What business are we in? There's an old story about Parker Pens who appointed a new marketing director, and they said to her, how can we sell more pens? Sales of our pens have been going down. She went away. She came back to the next executive meeting. She said, I think you're asking the wrong question. You're asking how can we sell more pens. I think a more important question is what business are we in? And the other directors looked at her rather quizzically. They said, we know what business we're in. We are in the pen business. She said, I don't think so. I've asked people why they buy our pens, and they don't buy them to write with. The person who buys a Parker pen buys it in a presentation case and gives it as a gift to somebody who's leaving the office, or son's passed his driving test, daughter's going to university, something like that. The person who buys our product buys a present. They give it to somebody who may or may not write with it, but we should change our pricing, our promotion, our distribution, our packaging to be aligned with the gift industry and not the pen industry. They did that, they were much more successful. So what business are you in? A different way of asking that same question is this: what problem do we solve? A customer only buys your product or service because they have a problem and your product or service solves that problem for them. And you need to understand the problem. Is the problem that they need a gift or is the problem that they need a pen? And it kind of makes a big difference to your positioning and your opportunities for innovation. So try those 2 questions on yourself and with your senior team. What business are we in and what problem do we solve?