Last week I introduced the first of a series of posts coming from the first draft of the final chapter of the book, Guiding Transformations. It introduced the chapter and its core framework, the three phases of transformation: diagnosis, encapsulated experiences, and follow-through.
Here I go through the first phase, diagnosis, involving understanding your customers and their aspirations and then designing the series of experiences that will transform them from what they are today to where they aspire to become.
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Joe
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Diagnosis
What do your customers aspire to become? That’s the first question of transformation guiding. Ahead of the transformation journey you must take aspirants through a diagnosis phase, to borrow a healthcare term. In this experience – often an economic offering in its own right – you get to know each customer or beneficiary as an individual person, organization, business, or community, and then ascertain each particular aspiration – their why – as well as where the aspirant is today relative to that desire. This from/to statement enables you to design, customize, and then guide the set of encapsulated experiences that prepare the aspirant for the journey as well as guide them in achieving this aspiration.
A from/to statement enables you to design, customize, and then guide the set of encapsulated experiences
Sometimes customers come with fairly general aspirations, such as to lose weight or become more fit, to save money, to learn about a useful topic, to get a job. Sometimes they are rather specific, such as to lose 30 pounds or gain washboard abs, to save for a first home, to gain a certificate or earn a degree in programming, to get a job as an AI data analyst. Sometimes they come with issues – health decline, organizational agility, offering innovation, increasing crime – particularly when the catalyst for transformation is a disruption. Whatever the case, you need to understand the aspiration – and the starting point – well enough to get to a from/to statement usable for designing the transformations.
Sometimes aspirants have flat-out wrong aspirations that are deleterious to themselves and restrict their own flourishing – in which case, as a fiduciary you owe it to them to set them straight. Sometimes aspirants delude themselves in where they are today or in their ability to achieve their aspirations. It can often be of benefit, then, to preface the diagnosis phase with triage, to use another medical term. Think of it as “phase 0” where the task is to determine whether a transformation opportunity actually exists for this particular aspirant at this time.
It can often be of benefit to preface the diagnosis phase with triage.
If not, you can guide aspirants to a proper understanding of the situation and aspiration, or even go through a pre-transformation transformation; that is, a transformation to get them to the point where they can realistically achieve their desire. For example, in 2022 the US Army created the Future Soldier Preparatory Course for recruits who could not meet its academic or fitness standards. For those who still want to join the Army, they can head to Fort Jackson, SC, for special instruction and training, with standard tests every week that mark would-be recruits’ progress. Every three weeks (up to a full 90 days) they can join the Army whenever they meet the same standards as everyone else. As of fall 2024, with a 95% graduation rate the US Army has almost 25,000 soldiers it would not have without the prep course.[i]
Ascertaining Aspirations
You need to ascertain aspirations at two different levels: generically to determine the nature of the transformation offerings you provide, and specifically as to what particular transformations you individually guide. In your business, you may start with a generic from/to statement, such as from recruit to soldier, from sick to well, from wage earner to lifelong saver, or from convert to disciple. This can be informed by what customers seek from your current offerings of goods, services, experiences, and even existing transformations as well as what you’ve learned in earlier chapters, in particular about the spheres of transformation and human flourishing, the types of aspirations and transformations, and the aspects of identity you can impact.
Perhaps the best way to think about your transformation offerings is to analyze customers’ jobs to be done (JTBD)