Case Study: How CM&F Helped Cloudforce Unlock Awards and Impact
Like any small business, we love a repeat client - not only because it’s proof they’re happy with the work we completed together, but also because we tend to connect on a personal level with our clients.
I’m so proud that we were able to work with Cloudforce founder and CEO Husein Sharaf multiple times from 2017-2021, and in reflecting on that work last year he and I agreed that we needed to document their amazing progress and the small role we were fortunate to play in it.
How did Cloudforce go from 2 people to 70+ in 6 years, while staying aligned to values and winning “Best Place to Work” awards?
Step 1
When Cloudforce started with just a handful of contractors, Husein needed a clear strategic direction. He’d never been through a collaborative strategic planning process, so we created that process for him and walked him through it with a hand-picked group of contractors and advisors.
Step 2
When Cloudforce’s initial employee team of five people needed to be united by a common mission, vision, and values, our facilitated sessions distilled the ethos that was core to all of them - the foundation of the values the company still lives by today, even as it has continue to grow in size and impact.
Step 3
And when Cloudforce later decided they needed a formal, repeatable, scalable process to guide the company’s philanthropy program? Well, that’s precisely the kind of work we jump at here - to create a space where everyone can fully participate, feel fully themselves in doing so, and the whole group can thoughtfully wade through diverse ideas to ultimately create a usable process for the company…
Check out how we did all this work with Cloudforce through our new case study.
The amazing upside is that, with a lot of their own hard work, Cloudforce ultimately won multiple awards (and I bet they will continue to do so!) - awards for fast growth, awards for being a best place to work, and even an award for their community outreach and impact.
Here’s some of what Husein had to say in reflecting back on our work together:
CM&F supported Cloudforce with facilitation of our leadership for the purposes of defining our Mission, Vision and Values in an authentic and concise manner.
Gina also helped us to set a strategic growth plan in our early days and to document our outlook for the next 3-5 years based on aspirational but realistic milestones and business drivers.
While we have grown and evolved significantly as an organization, Gina’s initial help in documenting our values persists to this day.
Like many passionate founders, Husein has long been interested in more than simply making money. Every year, he chose a philanthropic project for the company to contribute. Moreover, it’s important to Husein that his employees feel invested in the chosen project as well. As his team grew, he realized that just choosing a project he felt strongly about would not necessarily mean the project resonated with his staff. Could CM&F help his staff co-create a replicable process behind the philanthropy that honored all the things his staff felt passionate about?
Building consensus among diverse points of view is exactly what we excel at - so of course we helped his team, in our third series of facilitated, collaborative sessions. This time, the challenge was doing it as a series of hybrid meetings and using the right virtual tools to equalize and maximize everyone’s experience. Ultimately, we were able to create a repeatable, scalable process for philanthropy that honored everyone’s contributions throughout the sessions.
In 2024, Cloudforce won Microsoft’s “Showstopper of the Year: Commitment to Community” in its annual Prestige Awards - winning out over 58,000 global suppliers, specifically for the Cloudforce for Good program!
I’m really proud of the work we do here. If your team isn’t aligned, learn about our facilitation services.