3 Ps

A company may be looked as a combination of 3 things:

• The people who work at the company.
• The process the company uses to get work done.
• The purpose for which the company exists.

Purpose is why you're here.

• Have you explicitly articulated your purpose? Where? Can you frame up your purpose as a set of principles (see Charlie Kindel's 5 Ps)?
• How do you know when you're meeting your purpose? When you aren't meeting your purpose?
• What processes are in place to course-correct when you aren't meeting your priciples and purpose?

Processes what make things happen.

• What are your processes?
• Have you created tools that will repeatably generate your processes?
• What are the unfair advantages of your processes?
• What are the disadvantages? (Can't say "none".)
• How do you tell if processes have fallen into ossification?
• Where do you deliberately break with process?

When a company is acquired:

• Which of the 3 Ps are acquired? Which cannot be acquired?
• Which of these do you want? Which don’t you want?
• Which of these will be jeopardized by the acquisition? How can you protect these vulnerable assets?

3 Ps are also sometimes called "Resources, Processes, Values" (RPV). Same idea, different name.

See also Schein's model of organizational culture.