Let's talk about the 3 P’s that make GREAT companies.  There a many similar 3 P's methodologies out there.  Some talk about the "3 P’s of Project Management"-- Presentation, Planning and Processing.  Others preach a classic "Business 3 P’s"-- Product, People and Profit.

I want to rearrange these to place emphasis on sequence.  The 3 P’s to me are:

• 1st People,
• 2nd Process,
• 3rd Product.

This order matters very much, and here’s why:

People should be first, because they are the most important asset your business has, essentially they are the living body of your organization and nothing gets done without them.  The right kind of people will make your company great-- when hiring remember Attitude, Work Ethic, and Team Fit are most important, even more than skill-set, because that can be trained and learned.

Once you have the right people you need to ensure they know the “what of their job" by clearly defining their responsibilities.  This is the primary directive, without it there will be confusion and people will do what they think they should do and not necessarily what your company needs done.

Second is Process. Once your People know their responsibilities they will need to know how they should go about executing those responsibilities.  Think of Process as the sequence of actions that they need to perform in order to get a desired outcome.  In the absence of Process activities will be ad-hoc, things will take longer and in some cases work will be problematic and error prone.  Process takes some thought, and is the hardest thing for an organization to get right.  It takes research, documentation, and training to instigate Process, which takes time and patience.  This is upfront work, which will save much time and angst later on, so in a sense there’s a leap of faith to be made to get there.

Finally there’s the Product.  I don’t mean that the Product is less important, but with the right people and the right process it will be easier to get the Product focus right.  Once your People know what they need to do and how to get it done the Product will be the natural outcome of their labors.  The right People applying their responsibilities, using the Process, and having a Product focus, is what’s needed to make your company great.

So you can see that the order is important.  In summary you need to bring all the What’s together, with the How's, and then focus on the Product.

Of course there are many challenges for companies, and methods like the 3 P’s are just a tool like any other.  To implement such tools effectively an "outside view" is often needed.  This is where business coaching can help, because sometimes companies need a "life-coach", just like people sometimes do.

INFIX - Life Coaches for Companies. Infix.us