“Vital Behavior Blueprint: 5 Steps to Embed Mission-Critical Habits into Your Organization’s DNA”
West Virginia Press Association
FAIRMONT, W.Va. – If you’re like most leaders and performance improvement professionals, you understand how difficult it can be to get even the simplest behaviors started in your organization, let alone to turn them into lasting, winning habits. Fortunately, there’s now an easier way to establish habits at scale. Vital Behavior Blueprint: 5 Steps to Embed Mission-Critical Habits into Your Organization’s DNA by Drs. Julie M. Smith and Lori Ludwig is launching on October 31, 2024! Available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, this practical guide is a game-changer for any organization striving to make mission-critical behaviors stick.
Vital Behavior Blueprint website: www.vitalbehaviorblueprint.com
Smith and Ludwig, co-founders of Performance Ally headquartered in Fairmont, W.Va., offer a simple, five-step process to transform key behaviors into lasting habits that evolve alongside your organization’s strategies and processes. Backed by science, the book is accompanied by the Behavior Blueprint™ HUB—an interactive, video-guided toolkit with templates, workshops, advisory support, and a masterclass program to help teams achieve breakthrough results at scale. The HUB is an all-in-one, DIY platform for building and managing Vital Behavior Blueprints to execute any performance improvement effort.
Smith, who hails from Minnesota, came to West Virginia to earn a doctoral degree in West Virginia University’s internationally renowned Behavior Analysis program. While still a student, she had the good fortune of working with a team of faculty, students, and consultants at the University’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and Development (CESD) to pioneer one of the most powerful and practical behavior-centric business management systems available today.
That success led her to co-found the Continuous Learning Group (CLG—now ALULA) in 1993, which has since become one of the world’s première consultancies for behavior-based strategy execution. As a result of CLG’s success, Dr. Smith was inducted into the West Virginia Business Hall of Fame. Smith later co-founded Performance Ally with Ludwig. They have brought together a world-class team focused on combining state-of-the art behavior science with mobile technologies to ensure patients and staff work together to execute critical Vital Behaviors that lead to better outcomes—every time, at scale.
A wide variety of organizations have already experienced the power of Vital Behaviors:
“Our agency-wide Vital Behaviors ensured that 50 people on our remote hospice care teams delivered the ‘perfect care visit’ every time.”
“Our shift-wide Vital Behaviors got people to follow safety and quality procedures every time.”
“Our customer service Vital Behaviors helped our 8,000 in-home appliance repair technicians improve our Net Promoter Score from mid-tier to top-tier among our competitors.”
“Our global Vital Behaviors aligned 29,000 flight attendants around the world to do the four things our frequent flyers said were the most important things they wanted in-flight to remain loyal to our airline.”
“The inconsistency of behavior is a silent killer of business results,” says Dr. Smith, CEO of Performance Ally. “That’s why we developed this book and our Blueprint HUB—to bring our proven strategies to life and help leaders drive real change.”
Dr. Lori Ludwig, Chief Performance Architect at Performance Ally, adds, “Our approach has helped tens of thousands of people improve organizational outcomes tenfold. Many organizations are building this process into their business planning cycles to execute their strategies effectively.”
Derek Cortez, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Chileda (comprehensive care centers for children and adults with cognitive and behavioral challenges), said, “Our most recent strategic plan aims to reduce staff injuries leveraging the wisdom of the Vital Behavior Blueprint. The crystal-clear layout of the Blueprint provides our team with a map and set of instructions by which we are able to implement the Vital Behaviors to improve safety in our organization. We are implementing our Blueprint and are already seeing transformational value.”
Readers will discover the transformative power of Vital Behaviors through real-world success stories. They’ll learn:
- How to identify the Vital Behaviors that will propel their organization to unparalleled success when adopted at scale.
- A groundbreaking 5-Step process to embed Vital Behaviors as lasting habits, with the flexibility to evolve dynamically.
- Effective methods to ensure leaders and team members feel valued every day for doing the actions that matter the most.
Vital Behavior Blueprint: 5 Steps to Embed Mission-Critical Habits into Your Organization’s DNA is priced at $27.99 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Joe Jimenez, Former CEO, Novartis and Co-Founder & Managing Director, Aditum Bio, shared his validation: “One of the most important leadership lessons I learned is that unwanted behavior variability can be a root cause of poor performance—and most importantly, with the right tools we can do something about it. This should be taught in every business school. Luckily, it’s available now in this book.”
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About Drs. Julie M. Smith and Lori Ludwig
Dr. Julie M. Smith and Dr. Lori Ludwig are co-founders of Performance Ally. They have dedicated their careers to developing innovative ways to create lasting, large-scale organizational behavior change. Their groundbreaking methodologies and project results have garnered global awards.
Their new book, Vital Behavior Blueprint: 5 Steps to Embed Mission Critical Habits into Your Organization’s DNA and free templates provide a streamlined way for any leader and team to turn Vital Behaviors into organizational habits. Additional self-guided workshops and interactive tools ensure your organization becomes self-sufficient in developing Behavior Blueprints to improve any result.
Dr. Julie M. Smith Extended Biography
A native of Minnesota, Julie came to West Virginia to earn a doctoral degree in West Virginia University’s internationally renowned Behavior Analysis program. While still a student, Julie had the good fortune of working with a team of faculty, students, and consultants at the University’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and Development (CESD) to pioneer one of the most powerful and practical behavior-centric business management systems available today.
That success led her to co-found in 1993 the Continuous Learning Group (CLG), which has become one of the world’s première consultancies for behavior-based strategy execution. The firm, now known as ALULA, helps clients around the world successfully address some of today’s toughest business challenges. The proven tools developed by Julie and her colleagues have been identified as best-in-class by multiple independent benchmark studies and are widely used in global businesses and industries today.
Julie personally led dozens of CLG’s largest and most challenging engagements. Her effect on leaders and organizations is transformative. In an interview with The New York Times, the CEO of a global pharmaceutical attributed a great deal of his personal and company success to leadership lessons he learned from Julie while he shaped a new culture of innovation, customer focus, and patient centricity.
After experiencing back-to-back family health crises that were caused by preventable medical errors, Julie co-founded Performance Ally. She has brought together a world-class team focused on combining state-of-the art behavior science with mobile technologies to ensure patients and staff work together to execute critical Vital Behaviors that lead to better outcomes—every time, at scale. Providers have said this platform will transform healthcare by reliably improving safety, quality, and patient experience every care visit.
Dr. Smith is a successful entrepreneur who was inducted into the West Virginia Business Hall of Fame. She is a Trustee of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, on the Advisory Board for the Interactivity Foundation in Parkersburg, WV and has served on several not-for-profit boards including the West Virginia University (WVU) Medicine healthcare system. She also served as an Expert Faculty Member of the National Research Corporation (NRC) Picker Institute, where she had the honor of being the only behavioral scientist serving alongside 22 other healthcare professionals selected nationally to provide thought leadership. Julie was honored to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavior Analysis International.
Julie resides in Fairmont, WV where she and her husband, Mickey Heston, founded Heston Farm. When they retreat to the farm with their children, grandchildren, and friends, Julie and Mickey truly understand why George Washington said, “I’d rather be on my farm than emperor of the world.”
Interview and speaking requests are welcome, and we offer the following assets:
Vital Behavior Blueprint website: www.vitalbehaviorblueprint.com
Headshot photos of Drs. Smith and Ludwig
Cover shot of the book
Cover shot of the book and blueprint guide
Amazon book link: https://tinyurl.com/mmumy5n
Barnes and Noble book link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/vital-behavior-blueprint-julie-m-smith/1146433414?ean=9798988946137
Link to Performance Ally: https://www.performanceally.com
