Key Activities — what does your business actually do?

What does your business actually do?

That sounds like an obvious question. But when you really dig into it, a lot of businesses struggle to answer it clearly. Key Activities are the most important things you must do to make your model work — the actions that produce your value proposition, reach customers, maintain relationships, and generate revenue.

Not all activities are created equal. The question is: which ones are truly critical?

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Three broad categories

Production Designing, making, and delivering a product. This is the dominant activity for manufacturing businesses. Quality, speed, and cost are the things that matter most.

Problem solving Coming up with new solutions to individual customer problems. This is the world of consulting, law firms, hospitals, and professional services. Knowledge management and continuous learning keep the engine running.

Platform or network Maintaining and developing a platform that others use. Think marketplaces, social networks, SaaS products. The key activities here are platform management, service delivery, and growing the network on both sides.

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How to find yours

Ask: what must we be genuinely excellent at to deliver our value proposition?

A consulting firm: client diagnosis, workshop facilitation, report writing. A food delivery app: restaurant onboarding, logistics, software development. A media company: content creation, distribution, audience development.

If removing an activity wouldn't hurt your customers, it probably isn't a key activity. Many businesses confuse being busy with creating value.

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Activities vs. resources — what's the difference?

Activities are things you do. Resources are things you have. A software company's key activity is building software; its key resource is the team and the codebase. Both matter, but they're different concepts and worth separating on the canvas.

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Questions to explore with clients

• What are the three activities that, if you stopped doing them, customers would feel it immediately?
• Which activities are you better at than most competitors?
• Which ones consume most of your team's time — and are they actually creating value?
• Are there activities you do in-house that a partner could handle better or cheaper?
• If you had to cut 30% of operating costs, which activities would you protect, and which would you outsource?
• What are you not doing today that you probably should be?