SUMMi7

Business Scaling Method Cohort: January 26, 2023

This immersive virtual program breaks down the fundamentals of running and growing your business so you can develop a playbook tailored for you. Throughout the process, you’ll navigate through six stages with a peer group and coach to implement as you go.

Key features of the program include:
• Baseline Business Assessment
• Monthly Live Learning Sessions
• Bi-Weekly Office Hours to Dive Deeper into Topics that Interest You
• Interaction with Peers from Across the Country Representing

Different Industries
• One-on-One Expert Guide Sessions with former Fortune 50 CEO
• Optional On-Site Implementation Workshop
• Custom Playbook You Can Continuously Build On
• Optional One-on-One Coaching Throughout the Program
• Hybrid Option Available

Led by Eric Strafel SUMMi7 CEO
Call us at (409) 588-6077 or email [email protected] for more info!

We had a great workshop last week led by our founder Eric Strafel! But no worries if you missed it, we have more events in the works. To stay in the know, visit our website at www.SUMMi7.com and join our email list for the latest information on our programming. We had a great workshop last week led by our founder Eric Strafel! But no worries if you missed it, we have more events in the works. To stay in the know, visit our website at www.SUMMi7.com and join our email list for the latest information on our programming.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/neeru-marya-sharma_excited-about-what-promises-to-be-an-inspiring-activity-7003941620987416576-Xd-O?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Neeru Sharma CPCC, PCC on LinkedIn: Excited about what promises to be an inspiring morning talking strategy… Excited about what promises to be an inspiring morning talking strategy, systematic scaling and leadership at SUMMi7 (Business Scaling, Executive Strategy &…

Excited that our Founder Eric Strafel has been invited to speak to students at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine tomorrow during a special event for sophomores within the Success Coaching Program in Academic Advising entitled “Year-Two Reset: Growing Your Purpose at JHU & Beyond".

Introducing Our Executive Strategy Leadership Workshop!

Learn ways to create sustainable growth for your company, while developing your team, aligning stakeholders to your company’s core mission, and fostering inclusive leadership. Our 2-day Executive Strategy Leadership Workshop features the SUMMi7 signature Business Scaling Method™ process developed by Eric Strafel, Founder and CEO, who is a former Fortune 50 Executive and award-winning author of The Frontline CEO.

Reserve your executive workshop session if:
- Your business has 50 or more employees with more than $5 million in annual revenue.
- Your business has experienced barriers to growth.
- Your team lacks alignment on strategic direction and morale is low.

What it includes:
- Pre-work to develop an outside-in perspective of your business, inclusive of market research, customer insights, and employee interviews.
- A 2-day facilitated workshop session for you and the executive members of your team to collaboratively develop a strategic roadmap supported by data and market insights.
- A strategy playbook custom to your company to help you implement your plan with all levels of your team.
- Access to SUMMi7 Chief Growth Office engagements for continued strategic ex*****on support with a team of implementers working side by side with you.

If this sounds like a fit for you and your company or for more information, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

SUMMi7 Founder Eric Strafel shares on ALIGNMENT:

In any organization, be it big or small, aligning team members toward a shared mission and purpose is challenging. As time goes by, team members naturally drift into their own functional silos, leading to a lack of shared vision and focus across the team.

Most of us can relate to situations in which top executives become disconnected from the frontlines, leading to a breakdown in alignment of goals and objectives with middle management. Although this might seem more common in larger organizations, small to midsize companies are equally susceptible to these bottlenecks when the right systems aren’t in place.

Whenever embarking on a large project, setting a small, first-step goal that your team is able to quickly achieve can serve as a powerful method of ensuring alignment across your organization.

Early in my time at Honeywell, I saw this approach yield tremendous success. While working in a division that made pressure switches for thermostats, my boss at the time and our team set out to transform our division by focusing on improving productivity, performance to customers, and employee engagement.

The operation we oversaw was a perfect storm for potential misalignment – we had to coordinate bilingual teams across six different factories in two different countries with two sets of regulations in two different languages, all while producing 20,000 units per week in a highly competitive market.

In order to avoid misalignment as we embarked on the transformation of our division, we began working side by side with frontline leaders at each site, starting with a first event in which we outlined our objectives and how it would fit into the company’s wider purpose. Next, we began running weekly Kaizen events with each team, in which we taught them about the continuous improvement practices, how you move from identifying a process failure to planning a solution, implementing that solution, checking the results, and course correcting where necessary.

Moreover, we made sure to engage in dialogue with frontline employees to co-develop goals and metrics, which were consistent across all the departments. After establishing these goals, we posted them all on large boards at the entrance of each building and at the end of each assembly line – allowing leaders to track daily progress and reference them at stand-up meetings.

All of this created alignment and shared language among departments, which in turn gave team members a shared vision and sense of direction; increased motivation and engagement; and built a solid bedrock of trust in the company.

Discover how proper alignment can be the corner stone of your leadership practices in a webinar, illustrating how inclusive leadership can be catalyst to help grow your business.

To discover how proper alignment can impact your business growth, and to learn more about our Executive Leadership Workshop, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Pillars of Frontline Leadership: EQUALITY

Democratizing and creating greater equality within the decision-making processes of your company is one of the key foundations of frontline leadership.

Contrary to popular belief, the most efficient approach to making most decisions doesn’t come from the top – it comes from your employees on the frontlines who interact with customers and can see and respond to the shifting landscape before anyone else. Every day, team members make hundreds (or even thousands) of decisions that are minor course corrections to keep the business on track and moving forward.

The best people to make those decisions are the ones closest to the work, know how to best implement them, and will see the direct impact those decisions have on assisting the way in which they do their jobs. Only major decisions (e.g. shifts in direction for the company and significant investments) should be made by the top leaders with a broader perspective – and even then, it’s usually more effective to get input from the frontlines.

In the day-to-day chaos of running a company from the top, it’s easy to become disconnected from your team, causing bottlenecks, silos, and missed opportunities. As such, you should ensure that you’re always engaging with your team members on the frontline, taking their thoughts, comments, feedback, and concerns into account whenever you make any decisions for your company.

“People want to work, to contribute, to be able to leverage everything they have to offer, but their voice isn’t being heard.” — The Frontline CEO

One company that serves as a fantastic example of how the pillar of equality works in practice is Salesforce, which – under the guidance of Chief Equality Officer Lori Castillo Martinez – is driving a focus of: accelerating representation; taking employee experience into consideration; designing intentional systems; and engaging stakeholders.

If your team members feel that their voices are being heard by leadership, they are more likely to be engaged, empowered, and energized, leading to improved productivity and outcomes for your company.

Discover how you can make equality a corner stone of your leadership practices in a webinar, illustrating how inclusive leadership can be catalyst to help grow your business.

Register for the webinar at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/395248788767


For more information about our Executive Leadership Workshop, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Pillars of Frontline Leadership: DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

Ensuring that you’re hiring your team from diverse backgrounds is essential to creating an inclusive and equitable culture within your organization. When teams are diverse, individuals can bring a wide range of perspectives to the decision-making process, leading to increased innovation and creativity.

Indeed, Harvard Business Review research based on a survey conducted across 1,700 companies in eight countries found that diverse companies had a 19% higher innovation revenue. Moreover, a 2019 analysis conducted by McKinsey & Company found that companies with gender-diverse executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability.

One element of diversity that is often overlooked is disability inclusion, which Ted Kennedy Jr. (co-chair of the Disability Equality Index and board member of the American Association of People with Disabilities) has described as the “new frontier” of corporate social responsibility.

According to the recently published 2022 Disability Equality Index, 126 companies (30% of those who responded to their survey) have a senior executive who openly identifies as having a disability. Moreover, there is little surprise that companies who topped this year’s index are among some of the world’s leading businesses including Amazon, Bank of America, 3M, Google, and Starbucks.

Discover how you can make diversity and inclusion corner stones of your leadership practices in a webinar, illustrating how inclusive leadership can be catalyst to help grow your business.

Register for the Sept. 15th webinar at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/395248788767


For more information about our Executive Leadership Workshop, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Intro: INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP AS A CATALYST TO BUSINESS GROWTH

‘Frontline Leadership’ is a way to stay calibrated with how work gets accomplished in your business so you can make more informed decisions and incorporate input from all levels of the organization, increasing buy-in and providing the opportunity to cut through traditional organizational layers that hinder transparency.

In September 2021, Eric Strafel authored “The Frontline CEO: Turn Employees into Decision Makers Who Innovate Solutions, Win Customers, and Boost Profits”. Throughout the book, he goes in-depth on how ‘Frontline Leadership’ serves as a powerful framework for encouraging CEOs and executives to build connections with their managers, spending more time leading from the frontlines of their organizations.

Now, he will be sharing some of those principles in a webinar, illustrating how inclusive leadership can be catalyst to help grow your business.

Register for the webinar at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inclusive-leadership-as-a-catalyst-to-grow-your-business-tickets-395248788767


For more information about our Executive Leadership Workshop, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Prepare your company for barriers and challenges that can prevent your business from growth in the SUMMi7 signature Business Scaling Method™ Cohort Program with CEO and former Fortune 500 Executive, as well as award-winning author, Eric Strafel.

Our Business Scaling Method™ Cohort addresses the core challenges and barriers that that prevent businesses from achieving sustainable growth. For more information, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Visit our website to reserve your spot in the Sept. 9th cohort. https://summi7.com/business-scaling-method-cohort-august

Join Our Business Scaling Method™ Cohort

As a business leader, you never know what’s around the corner, but if you keep these growth breakthroughs as a guiding ‘North Star’, you can shore up your business for whatever comes your way and be positioned for continual company growth.

Prepare your company for barriers and challenges that can prevent your business from growth in the SUMMi7 signature Business Scaling Method™ Cohort Program with CEO and former Fortune 500 Executive, as well as award-winning author, Eric Strafel.

- Has your business reached a plateau?
- Are you experiencing challenges with team development?
- Does your business have 10 or more employees with more than $2 million in annual revenue?

If this sounds like you and your company, the Business Scaling Method™ Cohort Program is the program for you!

Our Business Scaling Method™ Cohort addresses the core challenges and barriers that that prevent businesses from achieving sustainable growth. For more information, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Visit our website to reserve your spot in the Sept. 9th cohort. https://summi7.com/business-scaling-method-cohort-august

CLIENT CASE STUDY: Indu Sanka, FSGS | Your Trusted Sign Partner

At SUMMi7, we worked with Indu Sanka, the owner of FSGS Your Trusted Sign Partner, a commercial property signage company that provides comprehensive signage services to the multi-family housing industry, commercial real estate companies, and marketing agencies. When Indu acquired the business in 2017, she realized she was facing a number of challenges:

There were no formal processes in place, meaning some team members had difficulty embracing change and adapting to a more structured work environment.
Employee roles and responsibilities were unclear, leading to high employee turnover.
There was no focus on the customer, forcing her to dedicate her time to engaging with customers to address their concerns and commitments that had not been fulfilled.

As such, Indu realized that she needed to change the company culture in order to enhance their customers’ experience.

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic and economic uncertainty, Indu participated in the SUMMi7 Business Scaling Method™ Cohort Program to help develop the company’s growth plan—starting with the vision that Indu had for her business and then engaging the team to support that plan.

As part of the process, we were able to clarify the company’s target customers, the value proposition that would drive customers to choose FSGS for their signs, and create a value stream map to help create standardized processes with a repeatable, high-quality product.

“I love the idea of coming up with the structure around team building and leading an organization. You basically have turned it from an art into a science. I see this as a learning opportunity just getting exposure to what you can build on. Even if you go into the individual pieces of it—the idea of creating a master schedule and having regular meetings and all of that. I like that there is a clearcut framework and a methodology to approach each of these tasks.”
– Indu Sanka

With an engaged team and a stable foundation in place, Indu continues to lead transparently, involving her team along the way to help innovate and grow the business.

To strengthen her company’s culture, Indu meets one-on-one with her team members every month, hosts a quarterly off-site get-together for everyone to stay aligned on the vision and current priorities, and holds a bi-weekly best practices forum to facilitate teamwork and give everyone a voice.

Despite the tough economic conditions, FSGS has outgrown its former space, and the company has recently moved into a new facility with more than twice the space to support their growth.

Our Business Scaling Method Cohort addresses the core challenges and barriers that that prevent businesses from achieving sustainable growth. For more information, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Visit our website to reserve your spot in the Sept. 9th cohort. https://summi7.com/business-scaling-method-cohort-august

Part 5: WE RECOMMEND YOU GET OUTSIDE-IN PERSPECTIVE

The fifth strategy you can leverage to prepare your business for barriers to growth is Get Outside-In Perspective. In good times and bad times, having a mindset of using outside advisers and consultants is important to maintain; however, in difficult times, the right guidance is invaluable. Seeking out experienced experts can help choose the right course of action to help your business grow.

In a recent article for Forbes, the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) highlights that when you’re starting a business, you can easily become overwhelmed by wide-ranging priorities and new learning curves. For that reason, taking the time to listen to experts who have been through similar processes and overcome similar challenges can have an enormous impact as you navigate difficult economic times.

Our Business Scaling Method Cohort delivers the outside-in perspective that businesses need for sustainable growth. For more information, contact Shelli Howlett at [email protected].

Visit our website to reserve your spot in the Sept. 9th cohort. https://summi7.com/business-scaling-method-cohort-august