Eric Strafel, CEO and Founder SUMMi7
Eric Strafel is a global business leader and operations executive. He has a proven international track record in leadership and project management in Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. He is both a leader in an aerospace start-up and a Fortune 500 executive. Eric is adaptable, collaborative and has a wealth of experience in building and scaling inclusive teams of experts who grow together to meet the increasing demands of work even while working across borders.
Eric Strafel is the author of THE FRONTLINE CEO and the founder of the consulting firm SUMMi7, which helps businesses grow profits and scale innovation with mission-driven purpose. Previously, he was the President and CEO of Aviall, a global provider of new aviation parts, supply chain management, and other services to the aerospace aftermarket, which was acquired by Boeing. Previously, he held leadership and program management positions at L3 Communications, Honeywell, and Precision Conversions.
What inspired you to write your book “The FrontLine CEO”? What are you hoping to accomplish through it?
I had started to journal about ten years ago and found the process of writing helped me reflect and grow personally.
Leadership is never easy, and it’s as challenging today as ever with the pace of change; widespread availability of information and disinformation; and five generations of people in the workforce who have learned their trades with different tools and in a different working environment.
Overlaying that is the need to continue progressing pay equity, inclusivity, sustainability, and other society-shaping issues that large companies are uniquely positioned to address. Writing THE FRONTLINE CEO seemed like a way to contribute positively to the conversation while also expanding my own perspective on leadership so I could be more effective.
Based on your experience as CEO of the publicly-traded company Aviall as well as your work at the management consultancy SUMMi7, can you share some practices that senior leaders must instill within their organizations if they want to build cultures that encourage everyone to think and act like leaders?
As CEO of Aviall, a Boeing subsidiary, I focused on three conditions that are foundational for promoting leadership at all levels of any organization. The first is a clear destination, a vision that describes where the organization wants to be 3-5 years from now, along with a purpose that describes why that destination is important.
The second condition is consistently empowering leaders and managers to make decisions and solve problems even if your senior leaders already have a good idea of what the answer is. The process of evaluating alternatives, making decisions, and collaborating to solve problems is some of the best hands-on leadership experience you can provide your team.
The third condition is what we call radical transparency, made up of continuous communication up and down the organization about how the company is doing, open discussions around key decisions, and active listening to understand where senior leaders can improve.
What are some ways you’ve found success with your leadership style? Have you ever had to adjust your leadership style to accommodate the more experienced or qualified individual on your team? If so, how did that go?
My own leadership style includes hard work, empowering others, and maintaining an optimistic view of the future. Quite a few times in my career I’ve worked with people who had more leadership or industry experience than I had. I found early on that they can be a great asset but only if I’m willing to show some humility, listen and learn from their experience, and partner with them to set direction and navigate complex issues that perhaps they’ve seen before and I haven’t.
Do you believe coaching skills can be taught or is it an innate talent that some people have and others do not?
I do believe coaching skills can be taught. Early in my career, I dreaded the annual performance review process that many companies use to provide feedback to employees. It’s a hard conversation that often turns negative, with both people walking away feeling worse. After many years of refining my approach, I landed on a process that I enjoy now which is helping people understand and leverage their strengths, collaborating on their development path, and asking questions intended to foster self-reflection.
What is the biggest barrier for small business owners that makes it difficult to be more inclusive?
The biggest barrier that we see continuously is delegating work and empowering a team to run parts of the business without the owner needing to be heavily involved. It’s a tough transition because small business owners may be the best at doing most tasks and feel a deep responsibility to the business to take an active role. However, at some point, you become the bottleneck to growth in your own business and need to get out of the way to allow others to help you grow beyond what you could do on your own.
On a final note, how would you go about improving company culture so that there was a better representation of diverse backgrounds and experiences at your workplace?
After many years of trying to change or shape company culture, I’ve realized that it’s extremely difficult to do unless you understand the deeply held beliefs that shape the values, actions, and visible symbols that make up the culture. The most effective way I’ve found is to lead working sessions with small groups of employees to understand why we do what we do; why we run meetings the way we do; why we only communicate through certain channels; why we engage with customers way we do.
As I explain in THE FRONTLINE CEO, once you get to the heart of the belief system by listing some of the key belief structures, then you can compare that to the actions that you observe. You will often see actions that don’t align with the values and beliefs of people in the organization and by being transparent and intentional, you can help shape your culture. This helps with diversity by pulling all perspectives into those working sessions to broaden your view of shared beliefs, openly discussing the perceived differences in how those are acted out day-to-day, and then aligning on a common identity that expands the collective identity of the organization. By peeling back the onion, expanding your aperture, and then rebuilding around shared values and beliefs you can create a more inclusive organization that incorporates the diverse backgrounds and experiences that are the foundation of your company.
