Why You Should Read The Five Ps to a WOW! Business by Bill Matthews [Book Review]
Five P's to a Wow! Business: An Easy-To-Understand, Easy-To-Implement, Practical Guide to Business Success
Since "The Five P System" is one of the tools I use when consulting with businesses, I thought it would be good to share some information about the book itself. What lies within the pages is a simple, repeatable process to run and improve your business.
Bill Matthews neatly summarized decades of business management experience and consulting guidance in an easy to consume book. The Five Ps to a WOW! Business is about learning and implementation; a business owner and team can learn about the best practices of any business and implement simultaneously.
Most business books are a reformulation/rebranding of known practices; this book distills best practices into the most important, repeatable and understandable steps that any business can implement.
The emphasis placed on People will be of help to any reader trying to learn to change an organization.
Don’t let the folksy manner cause you to underestimate this book. It describes 23 critical steps the business owner and team can complete with the Planning phase making up almost 50% of the steps.
Going deep into Planning — beyond vision and mission.
Bill takes the reader through a process that forces you to lift your head and look at the world that is changing and impacting your business. The Planning phase allows a business owner to examine the gap between today and tomorrow, define the right customer and create a plan with defined outcomes and accountability
The emphasis placed on People will be of help to any reader trying to learn to change an organization. There is nothing new about the right fit, but the Five Ps takes you through an examination of your people today against your needs of tomorrow; defining the right skills and measurable goals to attach to each position.
The book can’t make you embed the measurable goals into the culture, but a disciplined approach to the Five Ps will get you there.
It can be argued that Passion may not be the accelerator that Bill argues. Many businesses operate successfully without a great deal of passion, but those businesses may not reach a high level of performance as quickly.
However, it is fair to observe that “breakout” companies exude Passion from its owners and employees; they are fully engaged in living out the mission of the business.
The fans of continuous improvement may find the section devoted to Process as a brushoff; in Bill’s experience, businesses can figure out the process once the team is clear on the goal.
The devotees of Deming, with an emphasis on process, likely will not see the connection of working toward a greater goal as a primary motivator for employees; the Deming approach to teamwork will struggle in relation to the Five P approach to ensuring a right fit.
Studies show a dramatic increase in both worker and business performance when an organization effectively sets and closely ties individual employee goals to the company's overall strategy. Yet amazingly, a mere 7% of employees fully understand their company's business goals and strategies and what's expected of them in order to help achieve company business goals.Jayne Jenkins, CEO Churchill Leadership Group
Practitioners of process implementation — answering the question "What to improve" — will be well-served by the exercise on personal and organizational vision, serving as the answer to "WHY are we improving It"?
Quite a bit of time is spent in business on deciding what to improve; WOW! Companies have a team that understands why and where it will take the business.
If a reader learns only two skills from this book, those skills should be Planning and Performetrics.
The Five P section on Planning is comprehensive yet uncomplicated; the reader is taken through the key considerations of any plan with an appropriate emphasis on substance over form.
Bill Matthews accomplished his goal of providing an optimistic perspective of the best practices of successful businesses and instructions for implementation.
The devil is always in the details, or in the implementation, but I highly recommend this book for any business owner to start on the path toward something better.
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