"Three P's"

Three P’s: People, Product, Process

Marcus Lemonis on The Profit has given new life to the “Three P’s”, when in fact this has been a sage business mantra for many years now. Marcus extolls the importance of these three areas, noting that without a keen knowledge and proficiency in each of these areas no business in the world is sustainable.

Every person in business faces challenges on a regular basis. Challenges are either interim or systematic. Interim challenges are commonplace and usually caused from a mistake or a life episode. Systematic challenges are those that have endured for some time and create issues that continually affect the whole. Left unchecked and to ‘correct itself’ can be catastrophic. Stagnant or decreasing sales is a systematic challenge. Employee turnover, high-return rates and excess inventory are all systematic.  

If you are at a crossroad with systematic challenges in your business, dissect your operation into the Three P’s and do a written cause/effect analysis for making changes in the problematic areas. Thinking about the challenges in this regard helps bring clarity and decisiveness in following through with difficult changes.

A company we worked with years ago had seen zero growth for several years. Margins were thinning and the staff was consistently at odds with each other. The owner hired a friend to evaluate the problems and chart a course of action. After applying the Three P’s analysis he discovered that management seldom returned calls from the staff promptly (sometimes not at all) and seldom replied to their emails and texts. This went on for years and became the ‘norm’. No malice or ill intent, it’s just the way they evolved. What the owner’s friend discovered is that the staff didn’t feel engaged in the business and that their input was of little to no value; they felt insignificant. After some ‘tough love’ at the top and stringent restructuring, management improved their poor communication habits and the staff is now far more engaged in the business and accountable for improving sales. Engaged staff means more productivity.

In the brief example above, people are engaged when they know that their opinion and ideas matter. Everyone wants to be significant, to make a difference and to be recognized and appreciated. If people aren’t recognized or shown appreciation for what they provide they are no longer engaged. People that aren’t engaged won’t produce any more than they are expected to. Had the owner’s friend not applied the Three P’s analysis to their stagnant growth challenge they may never had realized how their poor communication habits with their staff were systematically affecting the company’s growth.

Use the Three P’s while creating a business or to ‘right the ship’ of an existing business experiencing systematic challenges.  People, Product and Process

Enjoy this ‘Biz Bit’? Please visit our Google+ page and follow us. Then visit BizClaz.com to place a FREE B2B advertisement for your products or services- no cost and no obligation!