UNPLAYED POTENTIAL
In Unplayed Potential, Jodi Standke examines why results often fail to reflect the true capability within a person, team, or organization.
Rather than treating every gap as a problem of strategy, effort, or execution, the book brings attention to the underlying influences shaping perception, decisions, and action. Through real-world stories and the four-step Circle Tool Process, Jodi shows how making those influences visible can open the way to clearer decisions, more aligned action, and new results.
What are you not yet seeing?
Capable people and organizations can fall short for many reasons. Sometimes the issue is strategy, resources, execution, or another visible constraint. Sometimes those factors do not fully explain what is happening.
A familiar problem keeps returning. A decision remains unclear. A team cannot translate its capability into performance. A leader knows something needs to change but cannot yet see what—or why familiar solutions are not working.
Unplayed Potential explores what may be operating beneath those experiences: unseen patterns, assumptions, relationships, loyalties, and systemic dynamics that can influence what we perceive, the decisions available to us, and the actions we take.
The book introduces the four-step Circle Tool Process—Assessment, Discovery, Clarification, and Action—as a way to bring more of the situation into view. It does not prescribe someone else’s answer. It provides a structure for examining what is present, what may be helping or constraining movement, and what, if anything, should change.
The Transformational Alignment Program brings that inquiry
into your own life, leadership, team, or organization.
Where might potential be going unplayed?
A useful place to begin is an honest assessment of what is happening now.
The Unplayed Potential Assessment offers a brief, practical way to reflect on where you—or your organization—may be experiencing a gap between available capability and current results.
It can help you notice where familiar patterns are repeating, momentum has stalled, decisions remain unclear, or effort is not producing the progress you expected. It will not diagnose the situation or prescribe an answer. It can give you a clearer starting point for deciding what deserves closer attention and whether a deeper exploration through the Transformational Alignment Program could be useful.
about Jodi
Jodi L. Standke is an entrepreneur, strategic advisor, author, and founder and CEO of Talon Performance Group. For more than 25 years, she has worked with business owners, executives, law firms, leadership teams, and organizations navigating growth, change, talent, and performance.
Throughout a career spanning executive recruiting, organizational consulting, leadership development, coaching, and business education, Jodi kept encountering the same question: Why do results so often fall short of the capability already present?
Her search for a better answer led her to broaden the inquiry beyond conventional performance strategies alone and examine additional influences shaping how people perceive, decide, relate, and act. Drawing from practical business experience, systemic constellation work, and structured inquiry, Jodi developed the Transformational Alignment Program and co-created the Circle Tool with P. Jamie Lee.
Unplayed Potential introduces this body of work through Jodi’s personal journey, client experiences, and the four-step Circle Tool Process: Assessment, Discovery, Clarification, and Action. Her work continues through Talon, where these approaches are used alongside other forms of analysis to help individuals, leaders, teams, and organizations examine relevant influences from additional vantage points and translate what they learn into decisions and action.
This work also connects with Talon’s use of Alignment Intelligence—a term Talon uses for a fuller, evaluated, decision-relevant understanding of the factors affecting a situation, and the capability to develop and use that understanding.
Jodi is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and has received numerous honors for her leadership and entrepreneurship, including Enterprising Woman of the Year, the NAWBO Luminary Award, and recognition as one of Finance & Commerce’s 40 Minnesotans on the Move.
The Crash
Unplayed Potential begins with the moment that forced Jodi Standke to stop.
A life-threatening bicycle accident became an unexpected turning point in Jodi’s life. Forced to step away from the pace and activity of her life, she began reassessing how she had been living, leading, and defining success. That period of reflection raised a question that would eventually shape this book and her work:
In pursuing this question, Jodi realized she needed to look deeper—to explore what may be operating beneath the choices and patterns we can readily see, and why capability, effort, and success do not always lead where we expect. That exploration became Unplayed Potential and grew into her work of making visible the often-unseen dynamics that shape human and organizational potential.
How did I get here?
By “here,” I meant on the ground, nearly dead.
I’d fallen off my bike, an event that would forever change the way I chose to live my life and how I would choose to do business.
I call it “The Crash.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I was flat on the pavement, staring up at the sky. For the first time in years, I wasn’t moving. I wasn’t planning the next meeting, strategizing the next move to grow my business, mentally drafting the next proposal. I was completely and utterly still.
In that stillness, a question emerged. I’d been too busy to hear it in real time: How did I get here? By “here,” I didn’t mean the pavement, stunned as I was. I meant my career. I had gone into a space where I’d never intended to go.
I was always in overdrive. More, better, faster was my mantra. It fueled my success. Living in that gear all the time eventually led to a crash—literally. That near-fatal bike accident forced me to stop, reflect, and ask myself: How did I become the woman who needed a near-death experience to be able to stop?
I’d built a successful business from my living room in my 20s, driven by purpose, integrity, and an unstoppable work ethic. The “more, better, faster” addiction is so seductive because when you are in that flow, it is fun. And it works—at least initially. I grew from a young entrepreneur into the CEO of a thriving business. It earned me respect, financial success, and the satisfaction of knowing I could make things happen. Somewhere along the way, though, traits that had served me so well—the work ethic, the focus, the drive—had become my master.
I was young, unencumbered, with the luxury of being able to go all in. I never considered how unsustainable that would become. That’s what our 20s are for, charging in, taking over the world, maybe learning things the hard way.
Back then, life in overdrive felt like freedom. I could work long days and have energy to do more. I could say yes to every opportunity, chase every lead, and attend every event that felt aligned with what I was trying to do. My body was resilient, my mind sharp, my spirit fed by the pure adrenaline of creation. Underneath it all was the foundational layer of caring about people and wanting to make a difference. It was always there, sometimes quietly. The business grew. I grew it through sheer force of will and endless availability. It was fun, exciting—and costly.
What becomes possible when you can see more?
Unplayed potential is not simply unrealized ambition. It is capability, insight, creativity, knowledge, relationships, resources, energy, or possibility already present but not fully accessible—and therefore not fully engaged, coordinated, or expressed.
Sometimes the obstacle is visible.
Sometimes important influences are harder to recognize, interpret, or connect.
A familiar pattern, an unexamined assumption, an unresolved relationship, a practical constraint, or a systemic dynamic may be among the factors influencing what people perceive, which decisions appear available, and what actions feel possible.
When more of the situation comes into view, new choices may emerge. Decisions may be better founded. Action can be informed by a fuller understanding rather than by more effort alone.
Sometimes the next useful step is not another answer.
It is a fuller view of the question.
The Transformational Alignment Program provides a guided process for examining the situation from additional perspectives, revealing influential factors, evaluating what matters, and deciding what, if anything, should change.
The Transformational Alignment Program
What do you do when capable people are working hard, applying sound strategies, and still not producing the movement or results they believe should be possible?
The Transformational Alignment Program—TAP—is a facilitated process for examining a situation from additional vantage points when ordinary conversation, analysis, or problem-solving have not been enough.
Using the Circle Tool Process, Jodi guides individuals, leaders, teams, and organizations through four interconnected stages:
ASSESSMENT
See the current reality more fully
Clarify the situation being explored and recognize where you are in relation to the result, decision, or change you want.
DISCOVERY
Bring more of the situation into view
Explore the people, relationships, patterns, obstacles, resources, assumptions, history, practical constraints, and systemic influences that may be affecting what is happening.
CLARIFICATION
Determine what actually matters
Examine what emerges, test assumptions and interpretations, distinguish what is known from what is inferred, and identify what appears most relevant to the situation.
ACTION
Translate insight into forward movement
Develop practical next steps that reflect what has been learned and create accountability for aligned action.
TAP does not provide a prescribed answer or another formula to follow. It provides a structured setting in which people can examine a situation from additional perspectives, make fuller use of information and capability already present, and identify actions worth testing.
Where might alignment deserve a closer look?
INDIVIDUALS AND LEADERS
Explore a consequential decision, transition, recurring pattern, leadership challenge, or sense that something important is not yet being fully expressed.
TEAMS AND GROUPS
Bring visibility to conflict, unclear roles, competing priorities, communication breakdowns, or dynamics that continue to interfere with collaboration and performance.
ORGANIZATIONS
Examine where leadership, culture, talent, strategy, or organizational systems may be working at cross-purposes—and what might support greater coherence and movement.
TAP may be useful when
- A familiar problem keeps returning despite repeated efforts to address it.
- A consequential decision remains unclear.
- A transition or change initiative has lost momentum.
- A team has the necessary talent but is not working effectively together.
- Strategy and execution are not producing the expected results.
- Conflict persists beneath otherwise professional interactions.
- Something feels misaligned, but the source is difficult to identify.
- Capability is present, yet it is not being fully expressed.
What deserves a closer look?
You may already know where the results in your life, leadership, team, or organization are not fully reflecting what you believe is possible.
You may not yet know why.
Unplayed Potential invites you to consider what else may be shaping the situation alongside the strategies, explanations, and familiar solutions you have already tried.
You do not need to have the answer before beginning.
Curiosity is enough.
READ
Explore the ideas, stories, and four-step Circle Tool Process in Unplayed Potential.
REFLECT
Use the free Unplayed Potential Assessment to identify where a closer look may be useful.
EXPERIENCE
Bring a consequential question, recurring pattern, decision, transition, or organizational challenge into the Transformational Alignment Program.