What A Business Really DOES

And why business processes matter.

‘If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.’ ​–​ W. Edwards Deming

A real business does 5 things really well.

I surfaced a quote from Josh Kaufman’s book, “The Personal MBA.” It sings to solopreneurs, monster multinationals, non-profits, and for-profit organisations. 

As the boss, you absolutely must get across each of these 5 horizontals:

‘Roughly defined, a business is a repeatable process that: 
Creates and delivers something of value … (1)
That other people want or need … (2)
At a price they’re willing to pay … (3)
In a way that satisfies the customer’s needs and expectations … (4)
So that the business brings in enough profit to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operating.’ (5)

Not just the horizontals themselves but also the interactions between them. The verticals, if you like, that link each of these 5 to the other 4.

If it helps, call them this

1. Product management

2. Marketing

3. Sales

4. Customer service

5. Administration.

This is why they matter

These 5 horizontals, every business needs to do them well. You can’t miss any of them otherwise your have a tangled mess hobby thing happening.

• If you have no product or service to offer, you don’t have a business.

• If no one wants what what sell, you don’t have a business.

• If no one knows you exist, you don’t have a business.

• If no one buys your stuff, you don’t have a business.

• If your product or service doesn’t work, you don’t have a business.

• If you don’t sell for more than it cost, you don’t have a business.

Fail one, you fail them all. It’s pretty simple.

Beat the competition on one, you have a competitive lead. Beat the competition on all 5, you win.

This is a central theme here at TBS. There’s no organisation ever that’s done even one of these horizontals so well that there’s no more improvement possible. You can always do better.

Your job, as boss, is to incrementally improve each of these horizontal activities, bit by bit, until they’re done better than anyone else. Like in my box analogy article, ‘you stop the leaks.’

The missing piece

The words “repeatable process” are important. These are the procedures, standards, protocols, task descriptions and operating manuals that define how every process is carried out - with compliance comes quality, consistency, and cross-functional predictability.

By the way. It’s easy to get bogged down by slavishly following process. Build in some wriggle room, because that’s where innovation comes from. It’s great to have well-defined processes, and at the same time allow for incremental deviations that may (or may not) improve things overall.

Updated 24 September 2025

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