Leading At The Next Level LIVE_ Leaders to Systems_ The POS Assessments
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Wes Dove: [00:00:00] 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 Cindy. We're streaming live to our Leading at the Next Level community. That's where you can always find the videos, and in this particular case, we've been doing some special editions going out to our Facebook and our LinkedIn channels as well, but that's not always gonna be the case.
We also use the audios that go over to our Leading at the Next Level podcast, so you can access those. But you really need the videos, so make sure that you join the community. There's no cost, and there's a lot of cool stuff that comes out in that we don't put out anywhere else. Now, if you're catching this, make sure you dig into the show notes wherever it's at.
Now, this is the third conversation in a short series where Cindy and I have been working through the idea of the People Optimization System, something that we've been really working through over the last little bit. We've been taking to market. Two weeks ago, we launched the POS Letter, the letter that keeps your [00:01:00] business from being a POS, right?
So that's just one of those things. Now, last time we had one of these podcast episodes, we talked about the first three implementation guides. Matter of fact, we talked about all the implementation guides, three of which had just launched. The other three went live now. Today, we're gonna talk about the piece that tells you where to start, the People Optimization System assessments.
Cindy, say hello and tell everybody what we're gonna run through as we get going.
Cindy Dove: Thanks, Wes. Today is a big day for us. The Leadership Growth and Experience Optimization implementation guides are live on Amazon as of today, October 10th. So that means all six guides are now out. Values, communication, and direction from the first wave, and now these three.
So every one of those guides starts with an assessment, and we've done that very intentionally. We don't want anyone guessing which pillar to work on. So today, we want to show you how the assessments work, why we built them the way we did, and how they point [00:02:00] an organization toward the work that gives them the best return.
And you'll find it all at posframework.com.
Wes Dove: And Cindy, I just put in the comments, wherever this is being accessed, I put in the comments the POS framework assessments link as well, in addition to the one that you just shared. But it's easy to find from the POS framework homepage because it's at the top, and it might even be in the footer as well.
Now, I want to start with something that's really been on my mind as we've been building this out. For the last 10 years, actually 11, since we started our business, almost everything that you and I have created has been focused on the individual leaders. And we just had a conversation, I think yesterday, with a great friend of ours.
We do a lot of work with him and his team and his organization. And we talked about how for the last 25 years, he and us and how hard we've worked at looking for that leadership development content to really help us grow, and how nobody's ever built a plan specifically for us. We had to chase it.
We had to go through those different things. Now, all of the stuff that we've worked through, the books, the courses, the coaching the [00:03:00] Impact Leadership Academy, our Emerging Leader Development, our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank, all of those things that you and I have built over the last 10 years has been how do we provide tools for the leaders that we can touch in their organizations?
How do we help them grow? And that work matters, and we're proud of it, and we're not walking away from it. But what we are doing now, and what we've seen over and over and over, is we can invest in a great leader and they grow And then they'd go back into the organization, and they didn't necessarily have systems to support what they had learned.
Or in some cases, they'd get promoted, maybe they'd leave the organization, and that progress would leave that respective spot when they left that spot. The organization was only as strong as the few people that happened to be pushing hard. And quite frankly, one of the things that we talk about in growth optimization is the people that are inherently already growing in the organization, they're the ones that are gonna grow wherever they're at.
But we need to build the systems to be able to help everybody in those organizations grow [00:04:00] systematically. That's the whole thing, the processes, if you will. The people optimization system, we've built that differently. It's organizational it's organizational system focused. It's, it asks, what do we build inside this organization so that direction, so that values, leadership, growth, and experience, it keeps working whether any person is in that room or not?
And I've had that conversation so many times recently about, "Hey, executive, hey, CEO, hey, owner, what happens if you go on a cruise for three months around the world? Will those things that you've worked so hard to put in place, will they stay?" And that's the shift, and that's where each of these assessments are really designed to start
Cindy Dove: Yeah, and the individual approach alone leaves a gap if there's not a system in place.
So Wes, I think everyone listening has really seen this in one way or another. Someone is great at their job, so they get promoted, and then they're left figuring out, though, the leading part, left figuring that out on their own. So one department has a fantastic manager, and they're [00:05:00] growing on purpose, they're growing their people on purpose.
In the department next door, though, they're not growing anybody, and that's not a people problem. It's a system problem. When growth or leadership depends on whoever happens to be motivated to develop and develop their people, it only happens for a few. But when it's built into the organization, it happens for everybody, and you can't build the right system until you know which one is holding you back, and that's what the assessments are for.
Wes Dove: Yeah. Cindy, that takes me back. I'll go off the notes that we've got here a little bit. It takes me back more than 25 years at this point, when I was doing that first 5S implementation. It was right after we got married, and I remember I was working with two different assembly lines. They made the exact same cross-section of product.
Picture perfect. It was a match. They did the same tasks. One had an assembly lead that was very, very engaged, and the other had somebody that was more or less adversarial and pushed back against everything, and one got massive results, and the other got no results. And they had the same supervisor. They had, had the same processes.
They [00:06:00] had the same everything. The, the people were equally capable. One got results, one didn't, and that was the difference between having the systems in place at a higher level and not, where the one group and the one leader took advantage and the other... It's exactly what you just said. Now, with the People Optimization System assessment, we built that so it wouldn't be guesswork, and we've been thrilled with the feedback we've gotten from the teams, from the leaders that have taken that assessment already to who's really talked about, "Wow, it nailed it.
It gave me perspective for exactly what we need in our organization first." It's more of a how do we get the right diagnosis? How do we make sure that's the right thing? So what we've tried to do is start with a free, and all these assessments are free, right? It's a 25-question te- assessment.
It takes four or five minutes if you're really reading it and so on, and you get an answer about your organization as it actually operates, not how you'd like it to be, assuming you're being honest. You can game it if you want to. But it'll give you one clear answer, [00:07:00] which of the pillars to work on first, where can you get the most immediate return on investment, and that's not necessarily the one that you score lowest on.
It's gonna talk about why you do that rather than why you might guess at something or why Cindy and I could even guess at something. We've been really intentional and strategic about how we've built these out. Now, I'm gonna be honest about what it is and what it's not. It's a handful of questions per pillar that talks about how direction isn't necessarily a full diagnosis.
It's gonna work through and give you a best case of here's where you score on each of the pillars, and here's where communication runs throughout. So we can really dig in to figure out how can we take that assessment and get a great feel for wh- where you're at, the specific assessment for direction, values, communication, leadership, growth, and experience.
How can we make sure that we understand exactly where you're at once that router assessment tells you where to start? Now, the last time you and I did one of these episodes, we talked about a conversation that I [00:08:00] just had with the CEO of a $100 million organization- ... who took it and asked me to guess his scores, and I knew his strongest pillar because we're pretty close with that organization.
We know a number of the leaders, we know a lot of the team members, and we knew exactly what it was gonna rank as his highest score, and it was spot on. And he and I had lunch together a couple days ago, and we talked through a little bit more of his results and what the plan looks like going forward, and it gave him clarity for what that plan needs to look like.
It wasn't just Wes and Cindy talking about, "Hey, here's what you need to do." It was based on his feedback, and it gave him, in real time, that feedback for what we should be doing. Now, the point of that, put your time and money where it's gonna move the organization the most. How can we make sure that we're delivering return on investment?
We've talked about that the whole way through. Now, like every one of our assessments, it ends with one thing to do. It's not a 50-page report. It's one action that comes right in your email for here's the next step you can take over the next week. [00:09:00]
Cindy Dove: Yeah. 50-page reports are painful for me.
Wes Dove: They're stupid.
Cindy Dove: But once you know your starting pillar then, each pillar has its own deeper assessment, so we love building that out. These place your organization in one of five stages. So using direction as the example, the stages run from- ... direction void to stated direction to direction avoidance to direction disconnect, and then finally, direction in motion.
So I won't build those out here unless Wes wants me to revisit this, but where it works every day is what it's showing you whether leadership is in the room or not So there's two design choices that really matter here. First, we never average the results. Each pillar is measured through several lenses.
So your stage is the lowest lens for your starting point. At, a late stage strength doesn't cover up early stage gap. So averaging would hide exactly the thing you need to [00:10:00] see. And then second, the questions ask what has actually happened, not how strong you agree with the statement. So it's easy to agree with what we value.
Let's say we, we value candor. It's harder to inflate whether someone has actually pushed back in a meeting last month and what is really valued there. So what makes the results honest enough to build on is exactly where you're gonna get exactly where you're gonna start at.
Wes Dove: Now, since the leadership guide went live today on Amazon, I want to talk about that one a little bit.
The leadership optimization assessment looks at four lenses specifically. All of them do, but since Cindy talked about direction and the stages, I'm going to talk about leadership and the lenses, and those are influence, presence, candor, and development. And that particular, all of the assessments take around nine to 10 minutes.
If you think through them and process them like Cindy, maybe it's going to take you 12 to 15. For me as a not much of a processor, just making decisions quick, it might take five to eight minutes, but you get the point. Nine to 10 is probably the average. And it [00:11:00] also looks at if you don't supervise anyone.
If you have direct reports, you've got a set of questions, and if you don't, you've got a smaller set of questions to go through. Now, we were very intentional about this, and this is my very favorite part. When leaders and team members both take it, the most useful thing is it's going to show the gaps between what leadership sees and what everybody else on the team sees.
Leaders almost always, and this isn't a bad thing, they almost ra- always rate themselves differently than the people that report to them are necessarily experiencing them, and that gap tells us exactly what we need to build, and it's something that no leader's self-reflection is ever going to capture 100%.
Now, one other thing that we see with this is not every stage, just like I talked about those two sim- assembly lines that were side by side, not every organization has every different business unit that operates in the same stage. Sometimes we're going to see XYZ business unit running at one stage, and the other is at [00:12:00] something completely different, and that's okay.
This gi- this is a tool that we've been able to put in place, and we can segment it, and we can build out dashboards and reports for individual organizations to look at where are we at with this team and where are we at with this team, and then how can we give the team what they need, not just some cookie cutter approach across the entire organization
Cindy Dove: Now let's talk about communication real quick, because communication has its own assessment, and it's built differently because communication isn't a six pillar.
It's the wiring that runs through all five pillars. It's a little longer, 42 questions, so maybe 15 minutes, 20 minutes if you're more detailed like I am. It looks at four lenses, and it gives two numbers for each one, one about you and one about the organization around you. And one thing we want everyone to hear, individual answers stay confidential.
Leaders see the group picture, not who said what, ever, and small groups get combined so no one is being singled out. [00:13:00] If people don't feel safe answering honestly, the data is useless, so we protect that.
Wes Dove: 100%. Now, we wanna, I've talked about this several times already, we wanna make sure that you as the organization see results that drive return on investment, and we've worked hard to do that.
So what happens with the results? We've worked hard to make sure that we can segment them. We can give you as an organization where they're at. We wanna make sure that we focus on where it gives you as an organization, you as a leader, you as that person responsible for profit and loss, you get what pays off.
Instead of sending one leader to one more workshop, we wanna look at the data that your organization identified. We wanna work through you to pull from that data what are the right things that we can build in first. And maybe it's a value system that actually guides your decisions under pressure. Maybe it's a growth path that we can develop in every single role, not necessarily pushing somebody to a leadership position, but make sure they grow to the [00:14:00] top of their capability, that we really hone in and give the people what they're looking for and gives them fulfillment in what they do.
Not just the folks that I mentioned before that are motivated and are gonna find it whether we have that plan in place or not. Now, every organization's different, and we get that, so we work with the team on site when we're able to. We've built some of these things as well for the individual or smaller organizations.
But when we work on site with a team, we're gonna be very intentional about making sure we've got the results in front of us so we can chat through and really dial in on what they see and know in the organization rather than just going on the assessment alone. The assessments are powerful, but we're gonna take a very strategic approach with them.
Now, if you wanna see what an on-site engagement includes, there's a page that lays all that out, and we've put that link somewhere, and I'll make sure we get it in the show notes or in the comments. And the reality is or every organization's gonna have a little bit different situation, so we'd rather, instead of saying, "Here's what the price point is," or, "Here's how this works," we'd rather we walk through that in person, because your [00:15:00] structure and your next-door neighbor's structure isn't necessarily the same because you're not at the same place
Cindy Dove: If you've been with us for a while, you might be wondering where does all this individual leader content fit?
Because we said in the beginning it's still something that we're using. It's absolutely what we enjoy, and it's been the foundation of everything we've done before launching People Optimization System, and it fits right where the assessment points. The system shows the organization what to build in our courses, coaching, our Leading at the Next Level leadership library.
That fills in the gaps for the individual leaders who will carry that system.
Wes Dove: And that's exactly right, Cindy. And I just, with the organization where I was talking about, I had the conversation with yesterday, we're starting to map out how do we build custom programs from that Leading at the Next Level library that now has north of 200 hours worth of content for specific individuals based on what we're going through in any given pillar of the People Optimization System.
So we [00:16:00] can structurally build that and have a plan that's specific to each leader in that organization. We still have a lot of the different tools in place, like Impact Leadership Academy, Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank, our public events and th- things like that. But we've been really working hard for how do we give individuals that structured approach that you and I never had, that when we talked with Craig Johnson, he said, "Gosh, I've never had that before in my career.
I had to chase it." We're working hard to be able to build that for them.
Cindy Dove: If you take nothing else from today, here are three steps. So first, take the PO- the free POS assessment, posframework.com. It's about four minutes, and then you'll know which pillar you're starting with. And then second, subscribe to the POS letter, the People Optimization System letter, so you hear about new tools first.
That comes once a month. Wes, correct me if I'm wrong about that, but right into your your mailbox. And then third, visit posframework.com\books to pick up the guide for your pillar, [00:17:00] including the three that launched today
Wes Dove: Yeah, that's 100% right. I just put another link in the comments for the what you get in an on-site delivery.
And again, that's an example. It's not a cookie cutter, and we don't want it to be c- cookie cutter. We've built these tools so we can be very systematic in how we customize them and make sure people get what they want. Now, we've had a lot of fun here. We've appreciated the opportunity to share a lot of this detail with you, and we wanna make sure that you get what you need through the process.
So take some of the assessments, kick the tires, see what we've got there. Now, one of the things we always do in this Leading at the Next Level podcast forum is we say, "Hey, if you have a need for continuing education credit through specifically in the human resources field, like through the Society for Human Resource Management, Human Resource Certification Institute, reach out to us directly.
Send us an email at admin@dove-development.net, and we'd be happy to give you a 14-day trial and then maybe even a discount code for one of the different tiers of our full [00:18:00] Leading at the Next Level program." Now, we appreciate you being with us. We look forward to serving you well in this process, and we wanna make sure that what we do with this people optimization system helps your organization not be a POS.
Right? Cindy, anything else before we say goodbye?
Cindy Dove: Nope. Thanks for spending your time with us. We hope to hear from you.
Wes Dove: You bet. Make it a great day, guys, and God bless
