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1. Strategy for Competitive Advantage - Strategic plans allow a firm to develop competitive advantages. Learn approaches to build your business and to recognize how customers, competitors, and your company interact to ultimately determine your performance.
2. Managing for Innovation and Growth - Growing companies must be looking forward, seize external opportunities and handle unforeseen change. Explore the behaviors and processes associated with innovative, growing organizations and how you can create a culture that fosters growth. Learn to see and understand new customer and marketplace opportunities and how to capitalize on them.
3. Process Mapping and Continuous Improvement - Process mapping clarifies specific roles and contributions involved in organization processes and identifies opportunities for process improvement. Examining the business as a system provides a framework to assist organizations in becoming more efficient and to ensure that processes are aligned with firm values and capabilities.
4. Strategy Mapping and Metrics - Strategy mapping facilitates business planning, prioritizes goals and objectives, and establishes key performance indicators and metric for outcome assessment and analysis. This approach, based on the Balanced Scorecard, focuses on integrating four perspectives of performance: financial, customer, internal process, and learning/growth. This holistic approach translates vision into daily operations.
5. Making the Social Media – Database Connection - Connecting social media interactions with database creates a powerful tool. A database connection with social media platforms allows you to interact specifically with the customers and suppliers who are following your firm. It is easier to identify and reward your customers. As well, social media can expand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
6. Negotiation - Negotiation is integral to creating value for the firm. Enhance your ability to use negotiation as a tool for managing conflict, make deals, settle disputes, and make team decisions. Learn how to execute proven tactics, refine your personal negotiating style, and improve your ability to bargain successfully and ethically in any situation.
7. Team Management - Learn the tools and techniques to help you lead. Strengthen communication skills, Increase your effectiveness as a manager, enhance your team’s potential and improve their performance. Create clarity, vision and build mutual trust with your team and inspire optimal performance from team members.
8. Cash Management - Cash management is instrumental in determining a company’s stability and efficiency. The method a company follows in investing, collecting and managing cash is a key factor for a company’s profitability. Cash flow management problems can cripple even the most successful firms. Learn cash flow strategies across a variety of contexts: information, collections, disbursements, and fraud prevention.

The SBLA program is an eight-week commitment and kicks off with a mandatory Orientation on August 28, 2024. Sessions will begin September 4, 2024, and will run through October 23, 2024. Sessions are held on Wednesday evenings, 5:00 - 9:00 p.m.

The program will begin with an orientation to introduce participants to faculty and fellow students, to lay out program sequence and goals for participants, and to distribute materials and assignments for the first session. Each session will feature high-impact takeaways that can be readily accomplished in the short term in addition to laying out longer-term pathways to value and growth for participants’ firms. SBLA participants will receive three Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

Tuition will be covered for those businesses chosen to participate in the program. The program is valued at $2000/individual.

Requirements for participation in the SBLA program include:

• Business must have been in operation at least 3 years (cannot be an entry-level or start-up business)
• Business must have annual revenues of at least $250K, fewer than 500 employees, and cannot be a sole proprietorship.
• Business principals must be willing to attend classes/seminars in person
• Scholarship recipients must sign a letter of agreement on commitment to the program.