Experience Optimization

Everything the Guide points you to.

The Experience Optimization Implementation Guide never prints a web address. It prints an ID — E1.2, E4.4.3 — and the ID is on this page. That way the book can stay right for years while what sits behind an ID gets rebuilt, renamed, or replaced.

Start here

Take the assessment first.

The Guide is five chapters, one per stage, and you start at yours rather than at the beginning. The assessment reports four lenses — Infrastructure, Belonging, Promise and Beyond the Walls — and never averages them. Your stage is your lowest lens, not your overall picture.

Thirty-two questions, about nine minutes. Sixteen and about five if nobody reports to you — and that is not a lesser version, it is the half of the instrument your answers can actually carry.

Take the assessment

How to use this page

Find the ID printed beside the exercise you are working on. The first number in an ID is the stage — E3.4.2 is the second movement of Stage Three — so the ID tells you which chapter it came from without a cross-reference table.

Every printable is a clean copy you can print as often as you need, for yourself or for forty people. Print a fresh copy per person and per instance — a worksheet somebody has already filled in is not a worksheet anybody else can use, and these are per-person by design.

They all live in one free library. You give a name and an email once and have every sheet from then on — there is nothing to buy. Your name is never shared with your organization, and you are not added to a mailing list.

Get the printables

Stage One · Experience Void

Nobody built this. Whatever it is like to work here arrived on its own, and it is held up by a few people who are good at this by instinct.

E1.0

Where You LandedYour four lens scores written down before anything else is read — and the plot grid, one mark per person per lens, so a team’s spread shows up on one page.

E1.2

Three Questions Worth More Than a Mission StatementWhat do you want to be known for; what are you actually known for; do those two answers match. The second question is not yours to answer — it goes to a newest hire, somebody who left, and an honest customer.

E1.4.1

The Deliberate Practice InventoryEvery practice this organization uses on purpose to shape how people experience it, and which ones survive the person who cares most. The blank space is the finding.

E1.4.2

Happy, Satisfied, or EngagedPlace each person, one name at a time, and mark where you are asking for happiness when what you actually need is engagement.

E1.4.3

The Three SignsIrrelevance, anonymity and immeasurability, marked person by person. Includes the anonymity test: can you describe anything about them beyond their output?

E1.4.4

The RowboatWho is rowing, who is along for the ride, who is drilling holes. Counted honestly rather than estimated.

E1.4.5

Room in the PotOne structural change this month — not a slogan, not a poster, not an announcement — with a name and a date against it.

Stage Two · Stated Experience

It is written down. Nobody has checked whether it is true. Every sheet here asks what the next person who arrives actually found.

E2.0

Is Stage One Actually Behind You?Five boxes, each naming the page in Chapter One it came from. Fewer than four, go back — it is the shorter road, not a demotion.

E2.2

Stated or LivedWrite the promise your organization makes in its own published words, then ask three people hired in the last year what they actually found. The gap is the score.

E2.4.1

The Last Seat You Filled Under PressureDid the standard survive intact, or bend quietly? And would you have noticed if it had?

E2.4.2

Ducks and EaglesWhere you are sending ducks to eagle school, and what it is costing the eagles who are watching.

E2.4.3

Screening Goes Both DirectionsWhat a candidate is allowed to learn about you before they say yes. Screening goes both directions, or it isn’t really screening at all.

E2.4.4

Clarity, Connection, Follow-ThroughScore your actual onboarding against the book’s three essentials and name which one is missing. The answer is the most useful line in the chapter.

E2.4.5

The Thirty-, Sixty- and Ninety-Day Check-InsOn a calendar, with a name and a date against each. A date, or it did not happen.

Stage Three · Experience Avoidance

You can see it. You have never put it on a calendar. Nobody in this chapter disagrees with you — and the cost is real anyway.

E3.0

Is Stage Two Actually Behind You?Stage Two closes when somebody has checked — when the promise has been tested against what a real new hire found.

E3.2

The Deferral LogWhat got deferred this quarter in favor of something more urgent, how many times it has been deferred before, and what the deferral taught the people watching.

E3.4.1

A Firm Grip on an Empty SackThe goal you are white-knuckling. What the organization celebrated, and what it protected the day after.

E3.4.2

The Three R’sRequired · Return · Reward. Run on your own week, which is how the book frames it — not as an organizational metric.

E3.4.3

Running on FumesThe person hitting every number while quietly burning out. Ask how they are doing, not how the numbers are.

E3.4.4

Quiet Quitting, Quiet FiringBoth named, both directions, and an honest call on which one is actually happening here.

E3.4.5

The Harder RightThe last decision where the easier wrong was more convenient, and the one deferral you will stop deferring — with a date.

Stage Four · Experience Disconnect

It is not yours any more. Somebody outside is carrying it now, and nothing on this page can be answered from your own desk.

E4.0

Is Stage Three Actually Behind You?Stage Three closes when a date exists — when something that had been deferred for years has a name and a day against it.

E4.2

The Homerun QuestionAsk customers or clients what would genuinely exceed their expectations. Write their words, not your summary of them.

E4.4.1

Twelve Hours on HoldMap the worst route a customer can take through your organization, end to end, timed. Every handoff, every wait, every place the trail goes cold.

E4.4.2

The Only Two Times We Own ItWhen it is our fault, and when it isn’t. The last problem you let an excuse carry.

E4.4.3

Reading the Person in Front of YouBehavioral style applied at the point of contact, one style at a time.

E4.4.4

One Person, One MeetingIf a client or community member only ever met you through the one person who happens to deal with them, what would they conclude about all of you?

E4.4.5

Ask the People Who LeftThree people who left in the last three years. Not the ones who left on great terms — those are the comfortable ones.

Stage Five · Experience in Motion

Somebody did it, and nobody told them to. Nothing here is dramatic and all of it compounds — and there is no sixth stage.

E5.0

Is Stage Four Actually Behind You?The only back-check in the Guide you cannot score yourself. It asks you to name the person most likely to disagree with your ticks, and whether you have asked them.

E5.2

Structure or MemoryDoes what happens for people here depend on one person remembering, or on something that keeps running whether anybody remembers or not?

E5.4.1

Recognition InfrastructureThe cadence, the owner and the budget line. All three, or it is a good intention with a track record.

E5.4.2

Celebrating the OrdinaryThe ordinary Tuesday rather than the milestone — and pointing to the passer.

E5.4.3

The Closed CircleThe team, shift or tenured group that has quietly closed, inside a culture that looks inclusive from the outside.

E5.4.4

One Gesture, or the Right OneRecognition and inclusion that flex by person instead of the same gesture for everyone. Equity, not equality.

E5.4.5

The Second ConversationAsk somebody you lead what it actually feels like to work here, and whether there is a moment in the last month they felt genuinely cared about.

Beyond the five stages

An experience does not rise or fall across a whole organization at once. It rises or falls at five specific moments, and in most organizations every one of them runs on instinct. None of these belongs to a single stage.

ET1

Who You HireThe experience promised in the interview against the one that arrives in week one — and the standard that has to survive the pressure.

ET2

Who You PromoteManaging the process, or leading the person. The single highest-leverage experience decision an organization makes.

ET3

Who You AddressEquity, not equality. The direct conversation with the specific person, using the tool that reaches them.

ET4

Who You Do Business WithVendors and partners. Their experience of you, and yours of them, is visible to the same community.

ET5

What You Do When Somebody LeavesThe cheapest diagnostic anybody will ever run. The preventable reason, named honestly, and the real math behind it.

When you would rather measure it than estimate it

Movement Three of Stage Four asks you to read the person in front of you, and an estimate of somebody’s style is enough for every sheet on this page — the Guide never asks for more than that. When you would rather have it measured, Dove Development & Consulting runs the behavioral instrument behind this work, and there is a person there to run it with you: dove-development.net/EffectiveCommunication

The printables

Every sheet above is marked in the library, and all forty are ready now. One free library, one name and email, every sheet from then on — including anything added or revised after the book was printed.