Welcome to the first issue of The POS Letter.
If you're new here: once a month, we'll send you one real idea from the People Optimization SystemTM — drawn from the Advantage Series and the Optimization Implementation Guides — built around one of the five pillars. No filler, no "10 tips" listicles. Just the thing we'd tell you if we were sitting across the table.
We're starting with Values, and there's a reason.
Three Handbooks, Zero Values I Could Recite
Wes spent nearly twenty years at a manufacturing company, helped write a section of the employee handbook himself, and couldn't recite a single one of the company's stated values today without looking them up.
That wasn't a one-time slip. It happened again at the next company. And the one after that. Three organizations. Three handbooks he had a direct hand in producing. Not one set of values he could tell you from memory.
None of those were bad companies. That's the part worth sitting with.
Cindy has a name for that stage: Values Void. Not "no values" — most organizations have plenty, carried around in the heads of whoever founded the place. What's missing is the through-line. Nothing written down, defined, and said out loud often enough that a new hire could predict what happens next.
This is the stage most likely to be mistaken for health, because the people are usually good and the work usually gets done. That's exactly why organizations sit in it for years — sometimes generations — without ever recognizing it.
The Book This Whole Framework Grew Out Of
On October 1st, the Revised & Expanded Edition of The Values Advantage becomes available — the book Values Optimization is built on, and the one the rest of the People Optimization System followed. If you've already read the original, the revised edition folds in everything we've learned running this framework with real organizations since. If you haven't read it yet, this is the place to start.
The Values Advantage: The Foundation for Leading with a Clear Purpose
Revised & Expanded Edition — available October 1
Where You Actually Stand
Before the book, or alongside it: the Values Optimization Assessment reads four lenses and tells you which of the five stages you're in — and which chapter of the Implementation Guide to open first. Thirty-two questions, about five minutes, free.
Take the Values Optimization Assessment →
If you'd rather start smaller: the Values resource library has twenty-five free printables tied directly to the book and the Guide — no purchase required, no account needed.
One Question Worth Sitting With
Could you name your organization's core values right now, without looking them up?
If not, you're not failing. You're in Stage One — and it's the easiest stage there is to leave.
— Wes & Cindy
Next month: Leadership. See you then.
Responses