Suzy Ross, a professor at San Jose State University, really helped me understand what causes transformations in people, and by extension in organizations, through her book The Map to Wholeness: Real Life Stories of Crisis, Change, and Reinvention[i].
Dr. Ross points to Joseph Campbell, who in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (the book in which he described the Hero’s Journey, a transformation model itself), “concluded that people transform as a result of three major causes: trauma, unexpected powerful experiences, and consciously intended journeys.”[ii] I’ve always tended to think about and focus on the last of these, intentional transformations where people seek to enhance some aspect of their lives, and have noted that unexpectedly dramatic, awesome, and even transcendent experiences can also be powerful stimuli for change, such as often happens with transformational travel. (See my previous post, Exemplar: The Travel Industry.)
But as I’ve read elsewhere, the most frequent catalyst of transformation proves to a “crisis”, as Dr. Ross notes:
. . . such as a terrible accident, the death of someone close to you, a serious medical diagnosis, or a robbery. No one wants to have a traumatic experience. Yet trauma can lead to deep personal transformation: An incest survivor discovers her personal power. A mother becomes an advocate for crime victims after the abduction of her child. A war veteran becomes a peace activist. A man hit by lightning discovers a previously unexplored passion for music. As traumas are faced and healed, people change in ways that might not have been possible if the terrible events had not occurred.[iii]
I remember long ago when my stepfather was on a flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, smoking a cigarette I’m sure (which tells you how long ago it was), when he had a heart attack. Paramedics were at the plane on arrival, and at the hospital the emergency room doctor told him that if he had taken one more puff of cigarette he. . . would. . . be. . . dead. Whether that was literally true or a scare tactic, my stepfather never smoked again, almost instantly transforming From smoker To non-smoker.
Such catalysts don’t have to be quite as, well, traumatic as that or the ones Ross cites.
They can be any sort of Disruption to our lives, a life event of enough magnitude to change how we live, whether almost instantly or over time. If we then don’t just let it happen to us but take control of the disruption and use it as a force for good (for us, our family or friends, our organization, our community, or society at large), to create an aspiration that spurs us to positively change in a direction we like, then through that we can initiate our own transformation journey.