S.O.A.P. FOR SUCCESS

West offers entrepreneurs concise guidance on business management, informed by her own experiences as a veterinarian.

The author starts off by noting how many business owners have plenty of passion but little knowledge of the day-to-day basics of operating an enterprise, such as meeting human resources needs, maintaining inventory, streamlining workflows, and upgrading technology. West offers a management approach that she describes as commonplace in the medical field, based on the acronym “S.O.A.P.,” which stands for “Subjective data, Objective data, Assessment, and Plan.” In medicine, “Subjective data” refers to how a patient feels, and “Objective data” is the result of diagnostic testing. “Assessment” is the act of identifying a patient’s problems, and “Plan” is the recommended treatment. West creates a four-step course of action focused on how management and employees feel about aspects of a business, including data points such as financial reports, key performance indicators, and analysis of the equipment a company is using, as well as the identification of problems, and a path toward improvement. She urges managers to create a formal, written plan to “triage” the issues they face, and she uses examples from her career managing a veterinary office, particularly focusing on the difficulties brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. Readers who are familiar with popular business-management books may find some aspects of this book repetitive, and they’ll come across many familiar ideas; for example, West is a proponent of the well-known Pareto principle, in which “80 percent of consequences come from 20 percent of causes,” and focuses at length on the importance of creating a workplace culture. Overall, though, many readers will find this book engaging, and its focus on big ideas makes it a comfortable introduction to the business-management genre for readers with a medical background. For example, she effectively hammers home comparisons between running a business and diagnosing a patient in every chapter: “If the patient isn’t breathing or the heart isn’t pumping blood correctly…the doctor immediately acts to correct these life-threatening issues…. Business entities can also have emergencies—situations and legal troubles that threaten financial health, brand reputation, and so on.”

Earnest, if familiar, management advice from a longtime medical professional.