Values Optimization
Everything the Guide points you to.
The Values Optimization Implementation Guide never prints a web address. It prints an ID — V1.2, V2.4.1 — 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
Find your stage first.
Twenty-five printables is a library, and a library only helps once you know what you are looking for. The Values Optimization Assessment tells you which of the five stages you are in, which of the four lenses is holding you back, and which chapter of the Guide to open first. Thirty-two questions, about five minutes, free.
Take the Values Optimization Assessment
How to use this page
Find the ID printed beside the exercise you are working on. Every printable is a clean copy you can print as many times as you need — for yourself, or for forty people. The page stays in your book, usable with a pen.
A few IDs are marked a practice rather than a printable. Those are things you do rather than things you fill in, so there is no sheet to print — the whole instruction is written out here on this page.
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 · Values Void
Everything this chapter points at.
V1.2
The Two Frustrations TestTwo or three frustrations, and what everyone would have had to agree on for each one never to have happened.
V1.4.1
Alone, Before Anybody TalksThe six questions, answered independently before the group talks.
V1.4.2b
When You Can’t Find the WordForty values written as behaviors. A dictionary, not a menu.
V1.4.4
Cut to What You’d DefendThe receipt test, applied to every candidate value.
V1.4.5
Write the SentenceOne sentence and two observable behaviors per surviving value.
Stage Two · Stated Values
Everything this chapter points at.
V2.0
Is Stage One Actually Behind You?The back-check before you start this chapter.
V2.3
The Thirty-Day TraceThirty days of decisions, traced back to a written standard.
V2.4.1
The Role Translation GridWhat each value requires in your seat, and what would not be tolerated in it.
V2.4.1b
The Team Cascade CardThe one page that leaves the book, for whoever runs this with their own team.
V2.4.2
Five Minutes, One ValueTake a meeting you already hold every week. Put five minutes at the top of it, not the bottom, and spend them on one value — where it came up since the last meeting, and where it was hard. You are not adding a meeting. You are changing what happens inside time you already spend. Rotate the value each week so no single one becomes the one you talk about.
V2.4.3
Say It Out Loud, By NameRecognition that teaches has three rules. Name the person. Name the behavior rather than the result — how they did it, not what it produced. And name which value it was an example of. The third rule is the one that gets dropped, and it is the one that makes it instruction rather than praise. Peer to peer as well as top down, or it reads as a management technique.
V2.4.4
The Values ChampionWhat the job is, and what it is not.
V2.5b
The Six-Week and Ninety-Day ChecksThe two dates that decide whether any of it survives the session.
Stage Three · Values Avoidance
Everything this chapter points at.
V3.0
Is Stage Two Actually Behind You?The back-check before you start this chapter.
V3.3
The Workaround AuditThe accommodations built around one person, written down.
V3.4.1
Name the ExceptionFour fields. The fourth is the sentence, verbatim.
V3.4.3
The Conversation Prep SheetPreparing the one conversation, on a full spread.
V3.4.3b
When It Doesn’t Go the Way You PlannedThe four reactions, and what to do with each.
V3.4.4
Stop Depending on CourageA standard that needs somebody to be brave gets applied unevenly, forever. Three changes remove the bravery. Soon and certain — a week is the outside limit, and small and quick beats large and late. A standing question in every one-on-one, so the subject becomes ordinary rather than an event. And accountability owned by whoever a person reports to, rather than by the one individual willing to do it.
Stage Four · Values Disconnect
Everything this chapter points at.
V4.0
Is Stage Three Actually Behind You?The back-check before you start this chapter.
V4.3
Read Your Own Promises BackEverything you say publicly, read as a stranger would read it.
V4.4.1
The Exception Clause TemplateOur value — except when it costs us this.
V4.4.2
The Three ConversationsA customer, somebody in their first ninety days, somebody who left. One rule.
V4.5
The Alliance Feedback RequestThe outside read. Who to ask, how to ask them, questions that get you an instance instead of praise, and how to read what comes back.
V4.4.4
Close One Gap Where It Can Be SeenOne. Not all of them. Take the gap that came up most often in the three conversations, say plainly what you are changing and why, and change it somewhere the people who named it will notice. Then go back and tell all three of them what happened. That last step is the whole exercise — it is the difference between having asked and having listened.
Stage Five · Values in Motion
Everything this chapter points at.
V5.0
Is Stage Four Actually Behind You?The back-check before you start this chapter.
V5.3
The Absence TestWhat holds when you are not in the building.
V5.4.1
Who Holds Each LegFour boxes, four names, and the ownership test beside them.
V5.4.2
Collect the StoriesAsk five people, separately, one question: what is a story people tell around here about something this company did? Not what the values are — a story. Then read what comes back five ways: what the story rewards, what it forbids, who the hero is, what it cost, and whether you would tell it the same way. Values do not transmit as documents. They transmit as stories, and yours are already being told.
V5.4.3
The Values in Motion Maintenance PlanWeekly, monthly, quarterly, annual. The page somebody pins up.
V5.4.4
The Handoff QuestionsWhat a successor has to be able to answer.
Tools for the decisions where values get applied
Not tied to a stage. Values live or die at a small number of specific moments — who you hire, who you promote, who you address, who you do business with, and what you do when somebody leaves. These are the tools for those moments, and they arrive as they are built.
The recorded lessons
Every stage has a set of short recorded lessons — the same work walked through out loud, including the parts that are easier to watch than to read: a cascade run live, an overdue conversation performed rather than described. They are part of the Values Optimization digital course rather than this page. The Guide does not depend on them — nothing in the book is a summary of something fuller kept somewhere else.
The printables
Everything marked in the library above is ready now. One free library, one name and email, every sheet from then on — including the ones added as later stages are built.
Get the printables
