The Customer Is the Only Judge
A company controls nearly everything about itself. The single thing it cannot control is what the customer does, and that is the only thing strategy is for.
Law II of Martin's Three Laws, and the reason Martin rewrote his own definition of strategy after twenty-five years, Strategy Is Choice. Pricing, hiring, product, structure, spend: all controllable. Customer behaviour: not. Strategy therefore has one purpose, to configure everything you control so as to move the one thing you don't, compelling customer action.
What the law disqualifies
Internal measures of strategic success, alignment, milestones, initiative completion, are proxies at best and theatre at worst. A How to Win is only real if the customer can perceive and act on the advantage: technical superiority the buyer cannot see or does not value compels nothing, however proud the engineering team is of it. And strategy review should begin from evidence of changed customer behaviour, not progress against plan, because plans complete on schedule all the time in companies whose customers never noticed.
The sharp edge
This law is the blade that cuts Strategy Impostors: a beautiful plan that leaves customer behaviour unchanged is a failed strategy with good production values. It is uncomfortable precisely because internal measures are achievable by effort while customer movement is not, and organisations drift towards the measures they can hit.
How this connects to OKRs
This is the deepest argument in our methodology for outcome-based Key Results and against task-based ones: "initiative completion" is internal theatre unless customer behaviour changes. It is why our preferred Key Result formula names a metric a customer moves, and why a quarter of green milestones with flat customer numbers is graded as a miss in retrospectives, whatever it cost the team. The customer's verdict is the only one the market pays out on.
One line to keep: A quarter of green milestones with flat customer numbers is a miss, whatever it cost the team.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
What does “the customer is the only judge” mean for Key Results? +
It is the deepest argument against task-based Key Results. Initiative completion is internal theatre unless customer behaviour changes, so the best Key Results name a metric a customer moves, not a milestone a team ships.
Can a quarter of completed work still be a miss? +
Yes. Green milestones with flat customer numbers are graded a miss in our retrospectives, whatever the effort cost. The customer's verdict is the only one the market pays out on.
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