Business Execution Canvas® Foundations · Lesson A4
Understand
Understand is the first pillar: knowing what customers need, what drives them away, what would delight them and what they will need next. Every pillar after it depends on getting this right, because an organisation that misunderstands its customers simply gets more efficient at the wrong things.
Four questions about every customer group
Understand has four components. Each asks one question, segment by segment:
| Component | The question | Good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Must Haves | What do customers expect as standard? | The top priorities of each segment are known, and performance against them, and against the best competitor, is measured |
| Must Not Haves | What would put customers off or drive them away? | These are captured by segment and actively designed out, then monitored so they don’t return |
| Delight | What would pleasantly surprise them? | Delight is designed into the service, not left to individual effort, and checked with customers |
| Anticipate | What will they need next? | Future needs are sought systematically and feed into plans |
Must Haves and Must Not Haves are not opposites. A client can have every service level met and still leave because each new system arrives with a bad first month. Removing what customers hate often matters more than adding what they say they want.
Harbourline’s customers
Harbourline’s Customer Value Canvas sets out four customer groups and 26 needs:
| Customer group | Must haves | Must nots | Would delight | Emerging |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed-service clients (about 35, such as Northlight Financial) | Service levels met every month; new services calm from day one; audit and security evidence on request; one point of contact who knows the client’s business | The same incident coming back; surprises on the invoice | Ideas that cut their costs or risk before they ask | AI that fixes routine incidents on its own; cloud costs managed and reported every month |
| Project clients (about 40 projects a year) | Delivered on time and on budget; works with their existing systems; clear change control | Disruption at go-live | Benefits measured and reported after go-live | AI features inside the systems Harbourline builds |
| Scaling fintechs (5 today, such as Quaylight) | Weekly releases without outages; a platform that scales with demand; security evidence for investors and bank partners | Waiting days for change approvals | Engineers who suggest product improvements | Help to scale into the US market |
| Clients’ staff who use the service desk (about 12,000 users) | Fixed first time; told what is happening | Ticket closed but the problem not fixed | Fixed before they noticed | Self-service and chat that actually resolve issues |
Two named clients show how different customers can be. Northlight Financial, an established insurer and bank, wants reliability, audit evidence and no surprises. Quaylight, a fast-growing payments app, wants weekly releases without outages.
Knowing is not the same as delivering
Understand is Harbourline’s strongest pillar, at 73 in round 3. Its managers know what customers want. But knowing a need and meeting it are different things. On the Customer Value Canvas, each need is scored for importance, for how well Harbourline meets it, and for how well its best competitor does, all out of 5. These are the needs where Harbourline falls furthest behind:
| Need | Customer group | Harbourline | Best competitor |
|---|---|---|---|
| New services calm from day one | Managed-service clients | 2 | 3 |
| The same incident coming back (must not) | Managed-service clients | 2 | 3 |
| Disruption at go-live (must not) | Project clients | 2 | 3 |
| Weekly releases without outages | Scaling fintechs | 2 | 4 |
| Waiting days for change approvals (must not) | Scaling fintechs | 2 | 4 |
| Ticket closed but the problem not fixed (must not) | Clients’ staff | 2 | 3 |
| Service levels met every month | Managed-service clients | 3 | 4 |
Harbourline knows every one of these needs; it is not yet meeting them. Most are about calm go-lives, repeat problems and speed, and its main competitor, Brackenfield Technology, sells exactly that. The gaps point straight at the later pillars: a calm go-live is a design and handoff problem, not a knowledge problem.
So a high Understand score is necessary but not sufficient. The canvas keeps knowing and delivering apart so you can see which one is failing.
Where understanding goes wrong
- Assuming instead of asking. Priorities are inferred from what sales hears, not captured from customers.
- Listening only to complaints. Must not haves are learned one angry client at a time.
- One view for every segment. A regulated bank and a scaling fintech are treated as if they want the same thing.
- Looking only backwards. Emerging needs, such as AI-assisted operations, reach the plan after a competitor has sold them.
What management can learn from software
- Good product teams write down what users must be able to do before anyone builds; good organisations write down what each customer segment must have before anyone redesigns.
- Defects users hate are fixed before features users ask for; must not haves are removed before delight is added.
- Usage data tells a product team what users will need next; customer conversations, captured and shared, tell an organisation the same.
Try it
Harbourline’s Customer Value Canvas
Choose Try the example, then Harbourline Services: its four customer groups and 26 needs. It is free. Allow about 15 minutes.
- On the Customers and needs tab, choose one customer group and read its must haves, must nots, delighters and emerging needs. Note what evidence backs each one.
- On the Fit and gaps tab, read the gaps that matter most, and find the need where Harbourline trails its best competitor by the most.
- Ask: is that a gap in knowing what the customer needs, or in delivering it? Which later pillar would you look at?
Pause and think · your notes
Bring the lesson back to your own organisation.
Check your understanding
Five questions on this lesson. Choose an answer to see straight away whether it is right, and why. Your score is saved with your progress.
Question 1
“Tickets closed but not fixed” is a…
Question 2
Harbourline scores Understand at 73 but trails a competitor on calm go-lives. What does that tell you?
Question 3
Why capture needs segment by segment?
Question 4
Which component asks what customers will need next?
Question 5
An organisation learns about frustrations mainly through complaints. Roughly where does it sit on Must Not Haves?
The Customer Value Canvas works alongside Strategyzer’s Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas, which describe the offer; it does not replace them. Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas are by Strategyzer. Harbourline Services and Brackenfield Technology are fictional companies used as worked examples in every Structured Collaboration tool. Harbourline’s figures come from the sample diagnostic report.
© 2026 Alex McDonnell. All rights reserved. Business Execution Canvas® is a registered trade mark of Alex McDonnell. Structured Collaboration Canvas™ is a trade mark of Alex McDonnell.
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