Is Your Business Engineered to Scale —or Held Together by Effort?

The Summit Climb Assessment™ evaluates the underlying systems that determine whether growth is repeatable, profitable, and sustainable.

Take the Assessment

A Summit OS® diagnostic • Delivered through your certified Summit OS Guide™

Based on 15 proven Business Growth Practices™, this diagnostic examines how your business performs across leadership, strategy, execution discipline, operational playbooks, profitability, and team health.

 It reveals where progress depends on heroics—and where systems are doing the work.Results are designed to be interpreted with your Guide.

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START
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PEOPLE
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PURPOSE
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PERFORM
5
PLAYBOOKS
6
PROFIT
7
TEAM
8
SCORE
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Last Page

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First Name *
Email Address *

PEOPLE

We have discovered 4-6 behavior-based, simple and relevant Core Values for our business, that our leadership team members exhibit and which are used as a filter for hiring, firing and promotions. *
We have determined the Functions that our business will need in the next 6-12 months to achieve its growth objectives. Each such Function has an owner dedicated to deliver the 3-5 principle outcomes defined for each such Function. *
We know who our A-players, A-potentials and B and C players are in our company, and we regularly coach our A-potentials, mentor our A-players, and are actively working on replacing any B, B/C and C players we may have. *

PURPOSE

We have defined an aspirational "Why" for our business, which points outside of our organization, could remain unchanged for 50 years, and which inspires our A-players and A- potentials to be missionaries for our business. *
We have defined a 7-20 year tangible and measurable big and exciting goal (Summit) and tangible Medium-term Milestones for our business which everyone knows and understands. *
We have clearly defined and stay focused on our Core Business, we have articulated our 3-5 Brand Promises, and we communicate Kept Promise Indicators (KPIs) demonstrating their fulfilment. *
We have distilled our strategy down to a simple (1-5 word) phrase, which everyone in our company understands and can act upon. We have devised branded terms for all our products and services to differentiate them in the minds of our customers and prospects. *
We are fully aligning our people around our vision and strategy by reinforcing each element of it at least quarterly to all our employees. Further, we are integrating the underlying concepts into all our tactics, policies, goals, company traditions, office layout and job design. *

PERFORM

We conduct an annual strategic planning process where we review and update our long term and medium-term vision and strategy and set annual financial targets and goals. *
We quarterly review our progress and establish 3-9 ambitious priorities (eg: Rocks, OKRs, etc.) for our company and pick a theme for the quarter. We share these Rocks with our team and align all employees around them. We create an execution plan for each of these priorities and make sure at least 80% of them get accomplished by our next quarterly meeting. *
We have defined and gamified 1-3 relevant, actionable metrics for each of our employees in the company and we hold each other accountable to winning each week and each quarter. *
We have established and are using a robust meeting structure in our business, including daily 5-15 minute stand-ups, weekly 60-90 minute tactical meetings for all our departments, and monthly 2-4 hour financial and rock reviews. *

PLAYBOOKS

We have defined all our repeatable processes, by outlining the 6-12 major steps and describing who does what with what tool in 3-7 bullet points for each. We append videos and checklist to our Playbooks where necessary. We have a playbook-champion and a deputy playbook-champion who manage our Playbooks in a central repository that our employees can access, as appropriate. *
We have ingrained our Playbooks in the company by regularly training users, tracking their compliance and coaching those that newly joined, or who may have fallen out of compliance. We have eliminated any single person dependency in our business. *
We are regularly optimizing our Playbooks, by enriching them with any additional steps that are helpful, and by eliminating all roadblocks, bottlenecks and waste, using lean principles. We are looking for ways to automate our workflows wherever possible. *

PROFIT

We have benchmarked our business to the elite players in our industry and have a plan to achieve our targeted profitability. *
We have engineered our business to deliver industry-leading profitability, by leveraging all necessary tactics, including the optimization of pricing, cost structure, delegation and elimination, continuous improvement and by driving operational excellence, if needed.
We have developed a differentiated Profit/X metric that allows us to grow in a "blue ocean" and we have designed our business's flywheel, and continually work on accelerating our growth momentum. *
We have developed a stack of differentiated strategies for our business that allow us to sustain industry-elite net profit margins for the foreseeable future. *

TEAM

We have developed a cohesive leadership team, that our leaders are loyal to, while being willing to challenge and help each other for the greater good of the organization. *
Our workforce is highly engaged with our business, we regularly attract new employees through word-of-mouth and we very rarely lose valuable staff. *
Our people feel inspired by our company's leadership and feel blessed to be working with us. *

Before You See Your Results

The Summit Climb Assessment measures how consistently your business applies the 15 Business Growth Practices™ used by elite-performing companies.

Your score is not a judgment.
It is a snapshot of how much of your business’s potential is currently being converted into results through systems, structure, and leadership practices.

Most leadership teams discover that their score reflects where effort is compensating for missing systems—often more clearly than expected.

Take a moment before reviewing your results.
What matters most is not the number itself, but what it reveals about where progress is constrained.

Your Summit Climb Assessment Results

0.00

Your score reflects how consistently your business applies the 15 Business Growth Practices™ in day-to-day reality—not intent, effort, or ambition.

Most leadership teams do not fail because they lack ideas.

They stall because critical practices are incomplete, uneven, or overly dependent on individuals.

The band your score falls into describes system maturity, not company quality.

80–99: Engineered for Scalable Performance

What This Typically Means

Businesses in this range have:

  • A clear, durable strategic direction
  • Aligned leadership behaviors
  • Disciplined execution rhythms
  • Defined and actively used playbooks
  • Intentional profitability design
  • Low dependency on any single individual

Growth is largely driven by systems doing the work, not constant leadership intervention.

The Hidden Risk

At this level, the biggest threat is complacency:

  • Outgrowing existing systems
  • Assuming alignment will hold without reinforcement
  • Missing early signals of drift as complexity increases

Productive Focus

The work here is about:

  • Raising the ceiling, not fixing the floor
  • Strengthening leverage points
  • Preparing the organization for its next level of scale

60–79: Progressive, but Fragile

What This Typically Means

Most companies in this range:

  • Are performing well by external standards
  • Have several strong practices in place
  • Still rely on leadership judgment and effort to compensate for gaps

Progress happens—but often feels heavier than it should.

The Telltale Signs

  • Execution works, but requires frequent course correction
  • Leaders are still pulled into too many decisions
  • Playbooks exist but aren’t fully ingrained
  • Profitability is good, but not structurally protected

Productive Focus

This is a leverage zone:

  • Small structural improvements can unlock outsized gains
  • Clarifying and reinforcing a few key practices reduces leadership load dramatically

This is where many companies plateau if they don’t get intentional.

40–59: Effort-Driven Growth

What This Typically Means

Companies in this range:

  • Have capable leaders and strong intent
  • Are growing primarily through heroics, hustle, and experience
  • Lack consistency across teams, functions, or time

Results are real—but hard-won.

Common Symptoms

  • Strategy exists, but isn’t consistently translated into action
  • Execution depends on a few key people
  • Processes vary by team or individual
  • Profitability fluctuates more than expected
  • Meetings feel busy, but alignment decays between them

Productive Focus

The opportunity here is not to “work harder,” but to:

  • Convert tribal knowledge into systems
  • Reduce variability
  • Shift from people-dependent success to process-enabled performance

This is often the highest-ROI improvement range.

Below 40: Constrained by Missing Foundations

What This Typically Means

A score in this range usually indicates:

  • Misalignment at the leadership or strategy level
  • Incomplete or informal operating practices
  • Growth constrained by confusion, rework, or decision friction

The business may still be surviving—or even growing—but at significant hidden cost.

What’s Really Going On

Low scores are rarely about competence.

They reflect:

  • Lack of shared clarity
  • Unresolved leadership trade-offs
  • Absence of repeatable systems

Left unaddressed, these gaps tend to:

  • Increase risk
  • Burn out leaders
  • Stall or reverse growth as complexity rises

Productive Focus

The priority is stabilization and clarity, not optimization:

  • Establish shared direction
  • Define a small set of non-negotiable practices
  • Reduce noise before adding sophistication

Translate This Score Into Clear Next Moves

This assessment identifies where your operating system is limiting progress.

Mike Barthlow, a SummitOS Guide™, will help you determine which constraints matter most now, which can wait, and the sequence of changes that will create real leverage.

This is not a pitch.

It is a working session to interpret your results and pressure-test your assumptions.

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