Welcome to the second issue of The POS Letter.
Last month we started with Values, because it's the foundation the rest of the People Optimization System was built on. This month, as promised: Leadership.
The Label on the Door
For years, the plant where Wes worked held a standing Tuesday meeting everyone called the Leadership Team Meeting. Department managers walked through units shipped, scrap rates, overtime hours, and whether the quarter was tracking to budget.
Necessary, skilled work, every bit of it. But not one item on that agenda ever asked whether the constraints themselves were the right ones. Carly Fiorina put the difference better than anyone we've heard: "Managers produce results within existing constraints and conditions. Leaders change or challenge existing constraints and conditions."
That room was full of good managers. The problem wasn't the people. It was the label on the door.
Somewhere in your organization, there's very likely a meeting, a title, or a whole layer of the org chart labeled "leadership" that is, in practice, management. And when an organization believes it already has leadership covered because it has a leadership meeting on the calendar, it stops looking for the real thing.
What Leadership Optimization Actually Asks
The Leadership pillar asks one question: is leadership held by a few people, or built as an organizational capability?
We look at it through four lenses β Influence, Presence, Candor, and Development. They're reported separately and never averaged, because a strong lens can't cover for a weak one. Your stage is your lowest lens.
Candor deserves a special mention. It's also one of the four lenses of Communication, which isn't a sixth pillar β it's the mechanism all five pillars run through. Leadership happens largely in conversations, and the one a leader keeps putting off is still teaching the team something.
Where You Actually Stand
The Leadership Optimization Assessment reads all four lenses and shows you which stage your organization is in β and which chapter of the Implementation Guide to open first.
Take the Leadership Optimization Assessment β
Prefer to start smaller? The Leadership resource library has free printables tied to the Guide. No purchase required.
Get the Leadership printables β
Not sure Leadership is your starting point? The POS Assessment takes about four minutes and ranks all five pillars.
Join Us Live: November 16
On Monday, November 16 at 4:00 p.m. ET, we're hosting a free 30-minute session called The Cost of People You Never Measured. Most organizations track every dollar, unit and minute, except the people who produce all of it. We'll show you what that blind spot is really costing you, and we'll give you four questions to answer about your own organization.
It's approved for 0.5 SHRM PDC and 0.5 HRCI recertification credit. Can't make it live? Register anyway and the replay is yours.
What's New on the Shelf
All six Optimization Implementation Guides are now out in paperback β Values, Direction, Communication, Leadership, Growth, and Experience. The Leadership Optimization Implementation Guide is the companion to this month's letter.
The Values Advantage Revised & Expanded Series Edition is available in every format, including Audible.
Next in the series: The Direction Advantage: Clarity That Moves an Entire Team Forward, releasing April 20, 2027.
One Question Worth Sitting With
Look at the meetings and titles in your organization labeled "leadership." Are they changing and challenging constraints β or managing within them?
Either answer is useful. Only one of them is leadership.
β Wes & Cindy
P.S. Something new: PROOF: The POS 360β’. Every assessment we've pointed you to so far is your own view. PROOF asks the people who work with you what they have actually seen you do, across all five pillars and Communication. If this month's question made you wonder how your own leadership lands, see how PROOF works β
Missed an issue? Read past letters online. Next month: Direction. See you then.
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