Your Free Access to Sukuma & 360s

by Sean Foster | February 03, 2021 | Newsletter

We either attend or hold a company meeting to identify our business strategy or our company values; we create some targets (or KPIs) around financial performance or customer call rates or product development; we have formal employee performance reviews and then umpteen one on one conversations that sometimes reveal valuable information that should be recorded or worked on. 

I found that with little effort I could store this information, but over time I realised I had often forgotten exactly where it was stored, and it was difficult to collectively communicate some of this to the team. This was partly because I had stored this information in so many different places: from digital to my diary, to a scrap of paper, to my filing cabinet. And lastly, sometimes as clear as my memory was telling me that I had recorded these important bits of information, it was nowhere to be found – that’s frustrating. 

The reason why this is a problem that needs addressing is that we all have busy lives and our attention is constantly being drawn to immediate needs rather than to aspects that lead to long term gain (refer to the Eisenhower matrix).  

So, when I started coaching other businesses, I found that this problem existed in ALL of my client’s businesses as well. I had no choice but to develop a solution. Last year I introduced Sukuma to my BIG members and this year we launched version 2.  

Available now in Sukuma: the 90-day planning toolkit. This is the critical component that is missing in most businesses. The Sukuma 90-day module is the most effective way to ensure both you and your entire team are working in quadrant 2, the important but not urgent activities which lead to long term business improvement.  

In February we will launch an additional two modules, these being NOTES and the SOAP module. 

NOTES is a purely internal communication platform where you store and share valuable information such as your CFRs (CFRs = Conversations Feedback Recognition, refer to Measure What Matters by John Doerr) 

SOAP is your business Strategy-On-A-Page. Every business must have a clearly defined business strategy that specifically identifies how they are to differentiate themselves and at the same time, how they can add value to the business and their customers.  

NewsBrief subscriber Offer: Our BIG members have been piloting Sukuma, now it is time to broaden its use to facilitate further Sukuma development. This offer should be of interest to you and to ensure that there is no cost or inconvenient implications to you, I am offering NewsBrief subscribers full complimentary use of Sukuma for a full 90-day planning period. Plus, I will include a full onboarding meeting from myself to ensure your success. 

360s and Employee Reviews 

If you are a one-person business, then the success or failure of your business hinges 100% on you. That seems a logical statement. Of equal logic, if there are many in a business, then the success or failure of this business will 90% of the time be 100% dependent on the capability of its people.  

You come across so many offerings that claim to be the “missing link”, that you need in your business to ensure success. In reality, they are just pieces of the puzzle. The high-level view of the puzzle overall is simply an engaged, smart and enabled workforce, and that includes you.  

If you buy into the above statement, then the only question remaining is: “What are the pieces of the puzzle that I need to excel at to ensure I have and am developing the best out of my employees?” 

Here is one of those puzzle pieces: Annual employee performance reviews have traditionally been done, especially in the corporate world. Most SME’s believe they should be doing them but usually, never get around to doing them. Nowadays, annual performance reviews have lost their shine and have been replaced by 360 reviews. As well as a movement towards more frequent employee feedback and development. CFRs is an example of this.  

My partners at Extended DISC and HR Profiling have just issued their latest newsletter explaining a little more about the 360 process: you can find the article here.