Leading At The Next Level Podcast
Episode: The People Optimization System Implementation Guides
Hosts: Wes & Cindy Dove | Dove Development & Consulting
Transcript
Wes Dove: Welcome to the Leading at the Next Level podcast with Dove Development and Consulting, the show built to provide ongoing support for your leadership journey. Wes here with you. We've got this pushing to our Facebook and our LinkedIn channel, and that's not something that we do all the time, and we've been doing it recently for some very specific reasons.
We're in the process of rolling some things out, and that's what we're gonna talk with you about today, and that's why we've pushed it there. One thing that you can always do is catch these live video feeds in our Leading at the Next Level community, and that's gonna be the place that you can go to for that.
Now, you may also be catching this from our Leading at the Next Level podcast on any of the platforms, Audible, Spotify, Apple Music or iTunes or whatever it's called, and all the different platforms that it goes to. If it's just Audible, be sure to check the show notes so you can click through and get access to some of these other tools that we're talking about.
Now, what I wanna be able to do is real quick introduce Cindy, because she's the most important part of this conversation, and touch back on what we've done over the last few weeks. Before I do that, Cindy, why don't you say hello, and then I'll get back to what we covered last week as a quick recap, and we'll move forward
Cindy Dove: All right.
Thank you, Wes. I am thrilled to be here with everyone, excited to share at least some high level and maybe even some deeper information about our People Optimization System implementation guides. So hang tight. This is gonna go fast, but we've got a lot of good stuff for you.
Wes Dove: Yeah. So if you caught our last episode, you know that we talked about the POS letter, the letter that was built not to be a POS, but to keep your organization from being a POS, right?
It's our free new- monthly newsletter in the People Optimization System that we've built. It's available along with a whole bunch of other free tools at posframework.com. That's part one of the story. Today is part two of that. So this week, what we're gonna do is talk through something that we've been building for a long time that's be- become a real thing.
We're so excited about that. So the first People Optimization System implementation guides are nail- now available on Amazon. The first three, I believe it was Direction, Values, and Communication, were available on Amazon as of October 1st, and the next three are live on Amazon as of October 10th, and that's for Direction...
I'm not... Sorry, I just said Direction. For Leadership, Growth, and Experience. And they're fantastic products. We've been able to get some copies in our hands already. We've been able to start showing them with to a few of our clients, and they've been wowed at how these things have turned out and the level of depth, the content that's available.
So today, we wanna make sure that we show you what they are, who they're for, and how they fit with everything else. So wherever you're watching or listening, or if you're in any of the different channels that I've already talked about, send us a comment, tag us, reach out to us, and make sure that we know which pillar you're already aware of that your team struggles with, because we'll be talking about some of the tools that we've built to make sure we can help you identify and really hone in.
Not... So it's not just a guess. It's very statistical So one of the things we've seen is this Tuesday morning problem, right? We've got a line in our books and it's really the reason that these guides exist. It says, "A book changes how you think." It doesn't change on its own, it doesn't change what happens in your organization on a Tuesday morning.
We've all done it. We've read a great leadership book. We've highlighted half of it. My goodness, we use a highlighter and we have all these different things, and that's why I don't like the Kindle version quite as much, 'cause if you highlight the screen on that, it makes the iPad or whatever you're using go bad.
But we catch these ideas, and on Monday, our inbox is full of all these things that are demanding our attention, it says, "Fires burning our butts," right? And then we don't get to make actual changes. The idea was good. What was missing was the way to put it to work. Now, Cindy, you see this with the leaders we coach all the time.
Can you give me a quick example of some of that?
Cindy Dove: Absolutely. You know, consistently, like you said, all the time, individuals are, they're learning and they're growing, and the more they know what to do though, they get back to work like you described, and they've got 100 fires going on, and they know what to do and they're doing it, but they know what to do, but when they get into those fires, then the application piece of that is where the struggle comes in.
Application goes out the window, and we keep doing the things that we already know how to do. So a- applying is what changes the result, so that's what we help people do through the Advantage series books and especially the implementation guides that we're talking about today. The books are where you learn to think about each pillar and identify.
The implementation guides are where you and your team actually do the work, and you can create a system to help you apply that
So for anyone that's really new here, let me just give you like a 30-second version. The People Optimization System, it looks at five pillars that decide whether an organization is working and where it's working the most, at the best, the fine- the most fine-tuned in each area, or where there may be some gaps.
And then there's one thing that runs through all five, and I'll touch on that. Direction is one pillar. Does everyone know where the organization is headed? So it... And do they know where it's headed well enough to say it in their own words and act on it in any given week? Values. Are the values that you published, you know, the values that people see, the ones that your people are actually using to decide when it really costs something?
Is that the behavior people are seeing when the rubber meets the road, when customers, when clients, when team members, when they need each other, or even when something goes sideways, are they still seeing behaviors that reflect your values? Leadership. Do the people leading know how to lead? Do they understand what leadership is?
Because we get that often. When individuals come into, for example, our emerging leader development program, "Wow, I'm so glad that now I know what leadership is," and they have a foundation. So do they know how to lead, or were they promoted for being good at the job, the technical skill, and left to figure out the rest alone?
Growth is another pillar. Is anybody here getting better on purpose? Growth that happens by accident only happens to a few people. Experience, the fifth pillar. What is it actually like to work here and to buy from here? What's it like to be a client and a customer? And those two answers are closer than m- most organizations really expect.
And then communication. It isn't a pillar, so it's not a sixth pillar just sitting with all the others. It's the wiring. It's this thread that runs through all five. It has to be c- completely through every pillar in the organization Did your people hear what you were trying to convey to them? That's why communication has its own guide too.
Wes Dove: Yep. Cindy, I'm gonna go off of our notes just a little bit and share a quick story. So within the last 24 hours, as we have this conversation, I got a call from a friend. He runs an organization that does about $100 million in revenue annually, and he had just taken the overall assessment. And he says, "Wes, I want you to guess how I scored."
Now, I'd seen the assessment results come through in my email. It pinged me, it says, so and so had taken this assessment, but I hadn't really dug into the details of it. And I said, "I know your organization well. I know what you scored best on was this," and I made a guess at where he was lowest. And it was two of them that I said, "Hey, here's where I feel like you've got opportunity," but I wasn't 100% sure as which needed the most and would be the best return on investment.
And he and I talked through it, and as we talked through it, he was thrilled with how accurate it was and how much data it gave him right then and there on how to get the most return on investment, and we can't wait to start that optimization implementation process with his team and capture it.
Because we've seen massive growth, I think close to 75% organizational revenue growth over the last five years he's been in that role, and I think we can capture a whole lot more. It's already some cool stuff. Now, here's the thing. Here's what these guides are for. We built them because for the last 10 years, Cindy and I have been working predominantly with individual leaders, usually within their organizations, to provide them with tools and skill sets.
These guides are large format workbooks, and we've been very strategic. We'll be rolling out some digital resources to coincide with them, but we've been able to build these so they're really powerful tools that aren't meant to be read through. They're meant to be worked through in a real workbook.
You fill it out, your team fills it out, you come back to it, you reassess over time and make sure you're getting a tangible return, and you're putting systems in place. And that's the key difference between what we've done with individual leaders- And the organizational approach that we're taking now, and we've really built a lot of those other resources into this model.
Each guide takes you through the same five stages specific to that different pillar, and it lands in the idea from void to stated values, and this, if we were looking at the original one, to the idea of how do we make sure it's in motion? And if we decided we were gonna take a round the world cruise, be gone for three months, it stays in place in the organization whether we're there to guide it or not.
How can we replace ourselves? How can we replace the skills necessary at every aspect and every level of our organization? Now, the part that we love the most, there are worksheets in every guide. They have printed IDs that you can go to the respective pages on the posframework.com site today, and you can download anywhere from 26 to 40 different individual printoffs that you can use at no cost.
We built those for specific reason, for the organizations we're working with so they had easy access. But the reality is we want everybody to be able to use those tools. You can get far more if you've got the workbook to go along with it. But I think the tools themselves will help even without the workbook, and that's a no-cost guide.
Now, each one has those libraries out there. There's a ton of different ones across each pillar. The guide is really built to the road- to be a roadmap so you can get the most from each as you work through the process and build those sustainable systems, so your organization can get massive results that quantify and compound over time.
Cindy Dove: And let's talk about timing, because we're really releasing these in two waves. Available now as of October 1st today when we're recording this, it's October 3rd, but the values, communication, and direction implementation guides are now available. Coming next Saturday, October 10th, is the leadership, growth, and experience implementation guides.
Now, these are all separate guides. All six are paperback. All six are $147 on Amazon. The easiest way to find them is on our books page, posframework.com/books, and we'll put that link in the show notes. And the free resources library for the pillars, they're already up. So even if your guide doesn't arrive until the 10th or maybe a little bit after, you can start looking at the printables today.
Again, that's posframework.com/books
Wes Dove: Now, the first wave, I wanna talk about those a little bit. Cindy alluded to it. She mentioned the different pillars: values, communication, and direction. I'm gonna talk about values first because it was near and dear, and re- we really thought that's what we were building a framework for, and it's expanded over time.
Now, it was really based on the Values Advantage book. The original edition was something that I was passionate about. It was a case study on an experience that I've had. Cindy's had it too. We've just had different roles in that process. But over the last five, five and a half years now, we've gotten to work with a company, and we've seen how values really was the core of everything they did, and they saw tremendous revenue growth, incredible profitability growth, and remarkably low turnover through some very, very tough times, and it was the case study.
What we've done with the original edition of The Values Advantage is we've revised it, we've expanded it, and we've built a very strategic process into that to make sure it follows the People Optimization System model and walks you through each of the five stages.
Cindy Dove: And communication is the one that touches everything, remember?
So you can have great direction or strong values, and if what you meant doesn't arrive as what your people heard, then none of it's landed. So I know we've all experienced that. This guide works through how people read a message, how it gets translated as it moves through the team. It talks about and covers candor, responsiveness, and practical everyday habits.
Wes Dove: Yeah. And direction was the third one that went live on October 1st, and that one's pretty near and dear to me too because it took what I talked about in Leading with Clear Purpose from an individual level to an organization level. It talks about how direction is really about whether people can explain where the organization's headed, and I talked about it in Purpose about how do we really internalize that?
How do we as leaders do it for our teams, and so on. This process of building that direction optimization is about how we do it strategically, and we build systems so we get the most out of it every single day. Again, when we get to the demo in stage five in motion, so we get it every day, whether we're in the room or not.
It's not about a vision statement. It's a shared understanding that really changes what people do on a Tuesday morning after stuff hit the fan on Monday. It helps guide you from leadership knows what it is to everybody knows where we're going.
Cindy Dove: So let's move to the second wave. I'm gonna touch on the actual leadership pillar.
So many leaders were promoted because they were great at the job, then left to work out, this leading part on their own. That's why Wes and I really started our business. One of the whys. The leadership guide is about building leaders at every level y- on purpose. You have to be very intentional to really build leaders in the way that you want to build them very strategically.
So leadership is something that the whole organization can do, not something that only a few people hold, but everyone should be growing in their leadership
Wes Dove: With growth, those two can get confused if you don't understand the difference. Leaders need to grow, but so does everybody else in the organization, and growth is specific to every single role.
How do we have systems in place so the person that comes in the door is better at what they do, what we hired them for, and where th- and closer to where they wanna go 30, 60, 90 days in and for the rest of their career? How do we have a systematic process? In so many organizations, the person that's motivated might find a way to grow, and therefore they tend to be the person that gets the growth treatment.
But if we have a system and we can build that in place to where we have it defined so we can do it for everybody, we can attract better people, we can keep better people, and we can be very strategic in what that process looks like. This guide helps you build that capacity deliberately so the organization grows because you planned it.
It's no happenstance. Not because a few people happen to push themselves, because there's a structure in place to make it natural across the organization.
Cindy Dove: Next is experience, and experience asks what it's actually like to work here and what it's actually like to buy from here. It really answers those questions, and we found that those two answers are closer together than most people expect.
The experience resource guide alone has, gosh, around 40 printables. It's live right now, and all three of these arrive on Amazon next Saturday, October 10th.
Wes Dove: Yeah, and I'll segue back real quick to say the, the, the general manager, the CEO that called me last evening and talked about it, when I knew the experience was the one that he scored the best in, that it was what his organization was best at, it was because of so many things.
So many of their key statements that they rely on, that they focus not just on their team, but on the experience the customers have, and it's not exclusive of one another. They're very, very tied together throughout the process, and for the entire time he's led that organization, he's been incredibly intentional about making sure the internal team experience is phenomenal, and so as is the outside experience, and it shows up when they look at it today.
Now, Cindy, do you wanna touch on some of the free resources that we've got lined up?
Cindy Dove: Sure. Now, we want to be really clear that you can start this work today without buying anything. Okay? So that's upfront. But what is really available now is the POS assessment. It takes about four minutes, 23 questions that go pretty fast depending on your personality.
A Wes can get it accomplished a lot faster than I can because of our paces, and it looks at all five pillars. It tells you which pillar is having the biggest impact on your organization right now, and it gives you one recommended action for the week ahead. Another another resource is the free resource library.
So in that library, again, that's at posframework.com/books. In that library, every printable for every pillar is free to download and print. The POS Letter is our free monthly newsletter, so that's where that we'll share new tools, announce new releases first, all of it posframework.com.
Wes Dove: Cindy, I'm gonna be very clear about pricing, but I need to be very clear about one other thing.
The notes that I gave you had one typo in it, and it's no longer a 23-question assessment because we're actively working to make these things better and all, all the time so they give you and anybody that takes it for your organization or for you individually the most usable data. We've since tweaked that POS assessment to be 25 questions, and we were intentional about how we did that to make sure it gave you a full read on each of the pillars as well as a very comprehensive read about where communication lands.
So we had to add a couple more, but it means 25, but it's still in the four to five-minute range. But I wanted to be specific because if somebody gets to it, "Hey, Wes did that. Please forgive Cindy because she didn't make the mistake. I made the mistake in what I sent her." Now, here's the thing. We've touched on this.
I want to be clear about pricing. The guides are 147 bucks, and you think, "My goodness, Wes that's kind of expensive for a workbook." It's not The $147, understand these are 200 pages, and they're not fill in the blank. There's a ton of content, there's a ton of resources, there's a ton of things backing them, and you can 100% go from start to finish in those and on your own get massive value through each one of those pillars for that individual cost.
And if I'm being completely honest, if you've ever used Amazon for anything, understand that they get a pretty significant cut of that, and there's a pretty significant portion of that's in the cost of getting those printed to begin with. The printables that we've talked about, that we've put on the website, those are free and they're always gonna be free.
And the reality is, I've talked about some of the numbers here, but I also know that that's gonna grow and change over time because as we identify new tools to put in with each of the pillars, we'll be able to add more printables for that. With the digital courses, as we roll those out, each one of the five pillars as well as communication will have 30 different lessons in that.
That would be the best we could do without being with you in person. But it's really geared for the individual that might have their own team, they're small, and maybe it just doesn't make financial sense for me and Cindy or somebody to implement this with you on a on-site, full day, once a quarter type basis.
We've built those. Those are gonna be $397 per person, and the first is likely gonna be the values optimization course. It's probably gonna be released in late 2026, and we're gonna be working to roll the rest of them out in 2027. Now, to give you the short math, six different courses times 30 lessons is a lot of work that Cindy and I need to do to get that, so be a little bit patient with us on that.
Our on-site implementations, we're starting right now to deliver those pilots, so we're dialing in the process. We're build-building the facilitator guide. We're working through a lot of different things to make sure we're delivering these. We're looking to, when we do the on-site pricing, and I think one of the pages on the site already has that mapped out for what that looks like.
We're doing that for 12 people, and when we're on-site with a group, it includes the workbook and it includes the digital resources for the pillar they're working through. So there's a ton of value built in, and it's not just about guiding. We work with them in the process of mapping out each of the things those printables do to where we help guide them through the systems they're gonna put in place to make sure they get the most value for that when we're there with them.
So they don't walk away with homework. They've got to follow through, but they have the clear plan in place before we re-leave the room. Now, the real thing, the thing I want to talk about real quick is why 12? I just said 12 people in the room. We're willing to be flexible in that. But the reality is, over the last 25 years that I've done training with organizations and individuals, the sweet spot I've seen is usually between eight and 15 people in a room.
If we've got 12, we're gonna get a very interactive group If it's more than that, people can hide in the background, scoff, maybe not engage, do whatever, and sometimes they get away with it. Now, you don't get away with it much with me and Cindy because we'll call you out on it gently, but we're gonna get you engaged.
But 12 tends to be the sweet stop, spot. If you don't have 12 in the room, that's okay. The lower it is, the more we can have that interaction and do it. But we've capped it at 12, and we're willing to be flexible, but there's some additional cost we incur on that when we go to 13, 14 and 15, so we wanna be transparent about that
Cindy Dove: So if you take nothing else from today, here are three simple steps just to package it and start wrapping it up. One, take the free POS assessment at posframework.com. Four or five minutes, and you'll know which pillar to start with. Second, subscribe to the POS letter so you hear first when the digital courses open.
And then three, go to posframework.com/books, and that's where you can pick up the guide for the pillar, and the assessment really points to that as well.
Wes Dove: Guys, as always, thanks for being with us on the Leading at the Next Level podcast. Cindy, thank you for helping me do all this, because this was a whole lot to get out.
We covered it in a fair amount of time. What I'll always say as we wrap up the Leading at the Next Level podcast is if you have a need for continuing education credit, send us an email at admin@dove-development.net, and we're happy to help you get I think we've just made some changes to where it's a 14-day, no-cost trial to any one of our monthly memberships with the next level leadership access of that program, giving you the opportunity to get continuing education credit for now around 200 lessons that are approved for the Society for Human Resource Management and the Human Resource Certification Institute.
And we do live lessons that wrap up with Q&A about twice a month, typically the first and third Wednesday around 4:00 PM Eastern Time. Hope this serves you well. Make it a great day, and God bless.
