The Performance Quotient
This podcast highlights CEOs, investors, and leaders as they break down the challenges of leading investor-backed companies.
Episodes uncover insights into leadership, culture, and capital - solving for the critical dynamics that drive performance, growth, and financial return.
If you are a leader who wants to learn from your peers about improving performance and financial returns, join us.
The Performance Quotient
From Misalignment to Measurable Growth - Stanley Liebowitz on Predictive Indicators
Can one simple question predict the health of your entire organization?
In this episode of The Performance Quotient, Will Lindstrom sits down with Stanley Liebowitz - founder and CEO of Predixxa and advisor to more than 450 organizations - to unpack one of the most surprising insights in organizational performance: how employees answer the question “Does my immediate supervisor care about my growth and development?”
Stanley discovered that when employees answer yes, engagement, productivity, and customer satisfaction metrics soar. But when the answer is maybe or no, performance indicators plummet across the board. This insight has reshaped how companies diagnose alignment and measure culture.
Highlights Covered:
- How one company went from near-bankruptcy to record-breaking sales by focusing on manager care
- Why culture isn’t monolithic - every department has its microculture driven by its manager
- Tools like diagnostics, brainstorming, and multivoting that turn data into collaborative solutions
- Why uncovering blind spots at the department level creates sustainable performance gains for the organization
- How small improvements in performance and costs can yield double-digit revenue growth.
Stanley’s work demonstrates that caring leadership isn’t just “soft”—it’s a predictive indicator of organizational resilience, growth, and profitability.
Learn more about his work at Predixxa
Seeking to align your leadership, culture, and capital goals - we'd love to hear from you. No sales talk - just a conversation about your challenges - book a call today.
Today I'm pleased to welcome Stanley Labovitz. Stanley is the founder and CEO of , a next-generation platform that helps leaders diagnose alignment and understand the hidden factors driving culture, performance and growth. He spent over 35 years advising more than 450 organizations, including Fortune 1500 companies, and developed tools like the Alignment Diagnostic and Pulse 4, which serve as early warning systems for leaders, people, process and customer engagement. Today, stanley helps executives and their advisors turn organizational misalignment into measurable gains in culture, performance and profitability. So with that, I would like to welcome Stanley. I appreciate you joining us here today.
Stanley Labovitz:Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
William Lindstrom:Yeah, this should be a lot of fun. So one of the things I know you and I have had a chance to talk about predictive indicators related to performance and one of the things I found the most interesting is what you shared to me about how a very simple question in one of your survey questions, which is does my immediate supervisor care about my growth and development? How critical that is in determining or anticipating the performance of an organization, and so I was just wondering if you could share a little bit more about why that question matters, how you came across that question and how it's kind of transforming or adjusting the way you achieve that alignment to drive performance.
Stanley Labovitz:Yeah, happy to do it. Actually, it all came about as a mistake. We of course run our project starting out with a diagnostic analysis by asking pertinent questions around very targeted areas. Our areas really are mostly around organizational alignment, which is based on Harvard Business School studies and Boston University studies. So it becomes very intensive in analyzing a company. So one question that we asked in the survey as an analysis question was my immediate supervisor cares about my growth and development, with a liquid scale from one to 10. And then he can take a look and see if somebody says, yeah, it's great, my manager's great.
Stanley Labovitz:Well, by mistake it was inserted as a demographic question. Right above am I a male or a female? Right above, which department I'm in. Right above, which function do I operate in? Yes, no, maybe were the three responses. So what we discovered in our 62 questionnaire model around alignment, when people answer the question my immediate supervisor cares about my growth and development. Around the 62 measures, 80% were in green, meaning they were 80 and above in the scoring, and the others were in yellow, meaning I love coming to work, I understand the culture of my organization, I understand my processes, I do everything possible to make my customers happy. On and on and on.
Stanley Labovitz:So, out of the sample of 500, we had 190 or so that said yes. And they come to work every day just as the kind of employee that you want to have, just as the kind of managers that you want to have. So what happens? When they said maybe, I had 193 people saying maybe. So what does that mean? They come to work every day with a bad feeling about their culture. They hate their boss, they hate the processes. They discover that they're not interested that heavily in driving customer satisfaction Drainage of revenue, drainage of proficiency, drainage of effectiveness, increasing retention issues. When they said no, 53 people said no, my boss doesn't care about my growth and development. And their scores were worse. Out of all the measurements, I'd say 98% of them coming to work were in the red. What does that mean? Scores in the 60s out of 100. I found that was really an amazing discovery and I went back to the client and we talked about it and, in fact, they implemented a program for managers whereby managers were trained to care about the growth and development of their people in this company.
Stanley Labovitz:Now let me fast track. Two, three years later, this company that was on the verge of bankruptcy back in 2019 is now up for sale with record sales and record revenue. They're all green. I thought it was a fluke. So what I did is, in the next 20 or 30 projects we had, I treated that one question as a demographic again not in the analysis questionnaire I'm happy working here. I love my boss kind of question, which we don't ask for but as a demographic. And lo and behold, I found the results were exactly the same in all of these 20, 20, 30 projects that we had done.
Stanley Labovitz:Interestingly enough, the findings were written up in three books. One was a medical book by an author, a physician, dealing with best practices for surgeons. We had a full chapter on these results of the first 2009 illustration and he used that as an example. I find that I'm using it now in every single model. Why? Because employees are impacted by managers. Sure, they're impacted by leaders. They're impacted by what goes on in the cafeteria. If they get out early, they're impacted, they love it, they're engaged. But the fact is, for sustainable growth in an organization, department by department, the manager is the key factor and if that manager simply cares about the growth and development of his or her employees, the results are remarkable.
William Lindstrom:That's awesome because I think that's one of those leading indicators where so much of performance management theory there's. All this qualitative data you have to gather and that can be really time consuming to actually find one metric that gives you the indicator that you can make a big difference is fascinating. So you had mentioned that in the first client that you had that they put a program together that took them from bankruptcy up to record sales about ready to grow. What would that program look like? How did they develop the managers? To demonstrate and I don't know if it's a demonstration, because I could see, you know, I've had some bosses that were really hard on me and I realized that they did care. I just didn't feel like they cared about my growth and development and kind of retrospect to realize it. So it's like, how do you develop that and how do you make sure that the workforce feels that in some way?
Stanley Labovitz:Yeah, that's a great question. There's only really one way to execute that. You need diagnostics that are going to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of each work group. Every work group, each work group in an organization, has their own culture. That's not what the experts say. They talk about culture in the collective's fashion, but the reality is that the culture is made up of a lot of different departments and someone at the top of the heap says gee, I think this is how I feel, so it becomes a sentiment. It's not a real culture. A culture is the environment that's being created when the organization and the leadership work together with processes and with managers and with people in order to drive customer satisfaction, customer delight. That's an environment. That's the real culture.
Stanley Labovitz:What we did is we with this one client. I worked with him for many, many years. He had the game plan and the game plan is to develop. So it became an internal competency. Nothing to do with me. It's impossible to have 100 me's in an organization that has 200 managers. You can't afford it and I don't have the time for it. So what we did is we developed an internal workforce, we trained them and certified them, and we certified them with something called an organizational alignment specialist certificate, Two or three days. Primarily it's HR and that was the first indicator of caring about the growth and development of the people in their organization, the HR people. So they became enthusiasts and they in fact implemented these programs manager by manager, by manager, but using their data. It wasn't your typical coaching training module communicate and trust and listen. No, they took the red scores from the diagnostics and they focused on the top red scores and they work with managers to team up with their teams in a collective fashion to get rid of those red scores.
William Lindstrom:That's really cool because I've been studying feedback theory and the importance of feedback theory. No-transcript wasn't always perfect, but they created that degree of trust and communication.
Stanley Labovitz:Mindset, of course, is everything People need to know, that their managers need to know that their behaviors are causing these red scores in their work groups. And, oh, my course is everything People need to know, that their managers need to know that their behaviors are causing these red scores in their work groups. And, oh my God, is the boss going to see that? The reality is all the senior executives get to see all of the departments and the red scores, so they see the strengths and weaknesses, the best managers, the worst managers. But let me answer your question.
Stanley Labovitz:Part of the training for the HR team I'll call them HR, it could be any team we bring in certain tools. We bring in the modeling around brainstorming, which is really a very unique targeted application when you think in terms of force field analysis. You put those two tools together and you have a collaborative group talking about here's where we are now, here's our red scores, this is where we want to be, we want to be in the green. And how do we get there? And you have a whiteboard and the manager is nothing more. It doesn't have to be the manager, they simply take down on the whiteboard the answers, then they multivote. And when you multivote- Can you describe multivoting?
Stanley Labovitz:just so that Sure sure it's a lot of fun for everyone when you brainstorm a problem. If you have 10 people in the room, you get 10 responses. If you get 10 rabbis in the room, you get 30 responses and you write those responses down and then everyone has a sticky pad. You know those little sticky yellow pads and you have right numbers on the one, three and five. I get up being the first employee. I numbers on the one, three and five. I get up being the first employee.
Stanley Labovitz:I go to the board which is now turned around and I look at all the responses and I said to me the most important one is this I put the five next to that, and then the three, and then the one. Out of all, the 20 or 10. And everybody does that. Then you turn the board around and you add up the numbers. And everybody does that. Then you turn the board around and you add up the numbers. If I get 10 fives, that's 50. If I get 10 ones, that's only 10. 50 wins. 50 becomes the primary tool to be exercised. Is that the word Exercised?
William Lindstrom:Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's like what you're going to focus on. Do you focus on all three or do you just focus on the one that's the most important, Because at some point in time it can be too much all at once.
Stanley Labovitz:Yeah, I agree. You know it depends on the audience. If the number five is really obvious communication skill. Oh, no one telling me what's going on. That's a simple solution. So the manager looks, says scores of 50 in communication. He says, oh my God, I better fix the communication. How do I do it? Like you just said earlier, you go to AI and say I'm a manager, I have 10 people in my work group and I have a very poor score in communication. Tell me how to fix it. And the manager gets spoon-fed a solution as to how to fix the communication problem in the office. Once that happens and your red score has now become yellow score. So it's an interesting phenomenon Other red scores without doing anything.
William Lindstrom:We've been studying, I've been looking at this. It's like identification, like if you're perceived, the perception of being identified and compared to other managers kind of lifts all boats because all of a sudden you're just a little bit more aware, not only the brainstorming and the scoring, the multi-scoring, but also just the awareness and the perceived. I don't want to say risk, but the perception of accountability is now, you know, at the executive level. So I don't know what your thoughts are on the importance of that.
Stanley Labovitz:Oh, oh my. It's two things that happen. Accountability is instrumental, there's no question. But the other piece that you have to think about is the managers really aren't trained. They haven't gone to MBA school, Most haven't. They haven't had any experience. They're technicians. They become a manager because they can make the best widget in the factory. So they become a manager, and most become a manager just by direction, not by instruction or education. Accountability for managers to the leaders become obvious. What's more pressing is engagement levels, collaboration, communication, people within the organization working together as a team, finally with a common may not be the organization's goals, but it's your department's goal. Improve communication, improve this process. That's what happens. It's a transformation within the organization. You're transforming your organization department by department by department.
William Lindstrom:And it seems like the biggest. The way you're doing it is almost bottom up, like you're including everybody into the process. So everybody feels included in the process and by being included in the process they feel like their development, their growth, because it's just not the promotion it's. I have a greater sense of I don't know belonging, a greater sense of responsibility, and then you do that across and then it kind of just all builds up. So it's more like individual bricks than one big monolith.
Stanley Labovitz:The only way. And then you're creating a culture of continuous improvement. And it's true, it's just not words. You're creating a culture of continuous improvement.
William Lindstrom:That's really fascinating. When you kind of come through these companies and you've done this, do you have any sense of what the? Because you know there's always the. So what question? It's got the money question right, it it's the with them at the executive level. When you do this, do you have any sense of the increase in performance regard to output or financial? I know you have the one case where they went from almost bankrupt to ready for sale, but that's kind of at the macro level. Do you have some more micro examples of what to look for, if you could see that it's working, like it was working because the look fors and the things to avoid or be careful of?
Stanley Labovitz:Well, you know the obvious things happen that you see. For instance, if a lot of companies like to do engagement surveys, that just tells you if there's a problem, people are engaged. It doesn't tell you what to fix, how to fix, who to fix and where to fix, but these are indicators Happier clients, less turnover retention and, yes, we do see the top-line revenues improve. There's been a study by McKinsey back in 2022, I think and the 2,500 companies. They said if you improve performance by 1% and you reduce costs by 1% fixed and variable, by department you can anticipate a 13.4% boost in revenue. That's what we do. Yes, I've seen the revenue increase. I've seen better results, better customer service, a better aligned organization. Why is that? From the executive standpoint, blind spots have now been revealed. So there's a lot of science around executives being troubled by blind spots and that's their barriers, but that's another whole topic. I don't know if you want to do that.
William Lindstrom:Yeah, no, definitely. I'd love to have that topic with you, but we try to keep these to 15 minutes and we're right about there. So if you wanted to leave us with the one big key takeaway with regards to this whole concept of managers demonstrating care and sincerity towards the growth and development of their workforce, what would you leave us with?
Stanley Labovitz:It's too singular a question, I mean yes, I could answer it, but if I want to leave anyone with something of input that organizations thrive when blind spots are discovered. There are really five or six elements of corporate operational performance that have been around since the beginning of conference the linkages of strategy, people in process and leaders, a couple of things like that. It's the alignment model. For companies to really grow, they need to transform into an aligned organization, and that means they need to discover blind spots, and every department has a blind spot and the leaders know less about what's going on within the organization than the managers individually or collectively. I would urge leaders to learn what's going on in the organization around these business components, these elements of your ecosystem. That's what I would recommend.
William Lindstrom:I very much appreciate it. I agree with that. Blind spots are deadly and difficult to identify, and so, since we've hit our time, I really appreciate you taking the time to sit on this, and I would love to continue our conversations and maybe have you back again for another interview. So I really appreciate it and I hope you have a great day.
Stanley Labovitz:Thank you, thank you.
