Not the 3 Rs of education (reading, writing, and arithmetic). How are two of those “R”s anyway?

The 3 Rs of business.

R&D
HR
and PR

These should be the fundamentals of any business.

R&D
“Never ‘ally’ with a ‘vendor’ not in the Top Decile of their industry on R & D spending!”
Tom Peters

Research and development is the heart and soul of a business. This is where the remarkable are set apart from the also-rans. R&D shouldn’t just focus on the product itself, but should focus on what is REALLY being sold. Customer experience. This includes the product, the package, the purchase process, the customer support, the storefront, the showroom, etc. Without this, your business has no soul. It’s an empty shell.

HR
“Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture.”
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, May, 1998 issue of Entrepreneur

What is your process in hiring employees? What is your effort to keep them? Stop interviewing prospective employees to find out what they CAN do.
1) Start finding out what they LOVE to do. Find out what drives them and motivates them. Find out if they are PASSIONATE about your product, service, customers, market, and/or industry.
2) Then EQUIP them. Train them to serve. They should know the heart of your company. They should know what makes it “tick.”
3) Then REWARD them for taking risks. Not just for safe successes.

HR is the embodiment of your company. It creates and sustains the hands and feet, eyes and ears of your business.

PR
… to this day, most institutions still look upon public relations as their ‘trumpet’ and not their ‘hearing aid.’ It’s got to be both.
Peter Drucker

PR doesn’t stand for Press Release, it stands for PUBLIC RELATIONS. It doesn’t mean just getting a front cover story in the business section. PR is the spirit of your company. It is the expression of everything within your business (product, people, mission, values, etc.) and how you absorb influences outside your business (customers, crises, competition, market shifts, etc.). PR is communication. It is speaking AND hearing. It also speaks through more than words (advertising), it’s through your body language and your inactions as well. Without PR, no one will ever accurately know the heart and soul of your business and your business will never accurately know the heart and soul of it’s customers.

The 3 Rs are the Heart, Body, and Spirit of your business. Have you looked at your business holistically? Is it a shell? Two-thirds or one-third of what it should be?