This post is a bit different, in that I’m not going to share a framework with you. No, I’m going to share two. Both categorize four different types of transformative experiences. Each yields differing insights, but they also overlap considerably. The core issue here is: which one is better, meaning better at prescribing what companies should do in guiding transformations – as well as what you, as an individual, should do in considering transformations in your life – vs. just describing what transformations are out there. Moreover, does it make any sense to include both in a book that already appears will be a bit overloaded on 2x2 matrices?
You help me decide. And because I want a large base of opinions, all of this post is available to everyone, not just paid subscribers.
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Epistemically Speaking. . . .
The first framework comes almost directly out of Laurie Ann Paul’s philosophical book, Transformative Experience. A professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University, Dr. Paul outlines two different ways in which people transform through experiences: personally and epistemically. On the first she writes: “If an experience changes you enough to substantially change your point of view, thus substantially revising your core preferences or revising how you experience being yourself, it is a personally transformative experience.”[i] Understanding epistemic transformation takes a bit more, where “epistemic” refers to the knowledge an individual has (epistemology being the philosophical study of knowledge). Paul says that if an experience
. . . is a radically new experience for you, it means that important features of your future self, the self that results from the personal transformation, are epistemically inaccessible to your current, inexperienced self. A radically new experience can fundamentally change your own point of view so much and so deeply that, before you’ve had that experience, you can’t know what it is going to be like to be you after the experience. It changes your subjective value for what it is like to be you, and changes your core preferences about what matters.[ii]
Paul recognizes that experiences may be personally transformative or not, and epistemically transformative or not. She never makes that 2x2 matrix explicit, for her focus is entirely on those experiences that are both personally and epistemically transformative, and these are the only ones she counts as “transformative experiences”. Such an experience
. . . teaches you something new, something that you could not have known before having the experience, while also changing you as a person. Such experiences are very important from a personal perspective, for transformative experiences can play a significant role in your life, involving options that, speaking metaphorically, function as crossroads in your path towards self-realization. The path you choose determines where you take your life, what you will become, and thus, by extension, your subjective future. Your own choices involving transformative experiences, that is, your transformative choices, allow you to causally form what it will be like to be you in your future. In this sense, you own your future, because it is you who made the choice to bring this future – your very own future self – into being.[iii]
In Paul’s parlance, such “transformative experiences” are truly radical transformations that fundamentally alter who you are. Paul cites the example of having a baby. Before you have a baby, the future experience of creating a human life is so different that you simply cannot know what it is like to be a parent. No matter how much you think back to your own parents and see other people having given birth and taking care of their children, actual parenting remains unknown to you, because it changes your values and identity so very much. (Her other favorite example, as seen with other philosophers: becoming a vampire.)
While Paul’s focus is solely on what is the upper-right quadrant of this 2x2, in thinking about transformations as a distinct economic offering it’s important to understand each of the four quadrants:
When the type of change is only in degree but not kind, and when the knowledge is along the lines of what one knows already, it is an Enhance transformation. This changes your ability level in something you already know how to do, such as playing golf and desiring to lower your handicap.
When a change in degree involves something unknown to you, it shifts into an Advance transformation where it gives you a new understanding of something. Paul uses the example of tasting a durian fruit for the first time, which I’ve done in China. It stinks. I mean, really, really stinks. But the taste is not bad (which surprised me given how much smell is a part of taste), and some people (mostly Chinese, I gather) love it. And that combination of taste good/smell bad was truly unknown to me.
When the change is one of kind, not just degree, but along a known dimension, then that’s an Enrich transformation. It is where you gain a new perspective (if mental) or new capability (if physical), or both, as in learning to sail.
An Alter transformation involves a metamorphosis, such as a caterpillar creating a chrysalis and emerging a butterfly
And finally, when the change is both in kind (Paul’s “personally transformative” category) and in epistemic quality (where you cannot fully know what/who you will be afterward) then we get to Paul’s focus, an Alter transformation. Such a transformative experience involves a metamorphosis, such as a caterpillar creating a chrysalis and emerging a butterfly, as the example above of becoming a parent illustrates. Other major life milestones in this category could include going away to college, joining the armed services, getting your first job, changing careers, getting married, and, for some, retiring. (How many people look forward to retirement, and then realize they just don’t have enough to do?)
As with most every 2x2, there are grey areas in between, where some aspects of the transformation may involve new knowledge, and others not; and most every change in kind will have some aspects that are only changes in degree.
See. Do. Transform.
The second 2x2 matrix is inspired by my work with Dave Norton, founder of insights consultancy Stone Mantel, and his colleagues there, particularly on The Collaboratives that we lead, with scores of participants from such companies as 3M, Best Buy, Coca-Cola, Providence, the Transformational Travel Council, and Truist. The last several years have included a track on transformations as a distinct economic offering, and one core insight that came out of the Collaborative’s qualitative research was that people viewed transformations along two dimensions: doing things differently and seeing things differently. Thus the framework:
Here I use nouns instead of verbs for the alliterative quadrants, but seeing differently without doing differently yields a change in viewpoint, a new Perspective. This could be as simple as when a new financial advisor gets you to finally understand the need to invest for your retirement, but could be as filled with potential as going to an immersive art exhibit such as Meow Wolf and deciding you want to an artist when you grow up (or even as a grown-up).
Doing differently without seeing differently breeds a change in behavior, leading to a new Performance. You may decide to get a Fitbit and endeavor to get at least 10,000 steps every day, for example, or again my favorite example, lower your golf handicap. (I’m getting back down to single digits this year! Actually, at the time of this writing it’s 9.9.)
The upper right quadrant is essentially the same as with the first framework. It’s about both doing and seeing differently, which results in a change in identity, a new Personhood. All the examples given above for Alter apply here, and it is the most transformative any experience (or, more likely, set of experiences) can be.
Now the lower-left quadrant is quite intriguing. You do the same, you see the same, and yet you are still transformed. How could that be possible, I wondered, when I first wrote the 2x2 down while Dave was presenting a set of qualitative data to the Collaborative participants. Fortunately, this is not the first time I’ve come across this type of surprising quadrant popping out of a 2x2, and I’ve learned not to dismiss it out of hand.[iv] What I eventually realized was that these were temporary transformations – transformations that happen to you for some length of time (morning, day, week, maybe even a month), but then you go back to “normal”, without any (or much of a) long-term change in how you do or see.
Still, my reaction was “Those aren’t real transformations.”
After all, as we discussed in The Experience Economy, transformations must be sustained through time, and companies must follow-through with any transformation to ensure it takes hold.[v] But I also listened when Dave and the Stone Mantel team in fact found that when asked about when and where they were transformed, people often mentioned changes they made that didn’t last – that were temporary, transient, Provisional. Live action role-playing, or LARPing, is one example, where for a time people transform into a completely different person/animal/alien/being, and then take off their costume and persona, stop acting, and become “normal” again. People also provisionally try out new careers (trying to gain some epistemic insight!) through offerings such as VocationVacations, where people took a vacation to work for companies such as microbreweries or bed-and-breakfasts for a week.[vi] I have since found a number of examples of this – which will wait for another post – but am not yet ready to call them true transformations. But they definitely are a phenomena to consider in this book, as they will provide opportunities for businesses to fulfill.
Either/Or/Both/And
Both 2x2 matrices offer related but different ways of examining transformations. Knowing which one your customers seek can be of great benefit in how you approach them, and thinking about the dimensions of the axes – four in total – can also help realize ways in which you mass customize your transformative experiences, to meet aspirants where they’re at across the spectrums.
The other thing that strikes me about these frameworks is the underserved opportunities for helping people Alter their Personhood and Enhance transient, Provisional transformations (or not-transformations), the latter of which could be steppingstones to providing fuller, lasting change in people’s lives.
Joe Pine
© 2024 B. Joseph Pine II
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So which one do you think I should use? Or is it Both/And? Please do fill out this form to let me know your thoughts on these two frameworks of Transformative Experiences:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSckpBlBrbZISf_jzfMKXpHCyNOoYG9_aZEFKl0_KsamIFayJQ/viewform
[i] L. A. Paul, Transformative Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 16.
[ii] Ibid., p. 17.
[iii] Ibid., pp. 17-18, emphasis in original.
[iv] I’ve seen many other thinkers have 2x2s like this and just “wave their arms” (as we used to say regarding certain mathematical proofs in college) at the lower-left quadrant and say it doesn’t matter, it’s not worth thinking about, or it’s non-operative. My first encounter with such a 2x2 was in working with Jim Gilmore when he was still at CSC Consulting back in the mid-1990s. He financed a research project (with a me and a summer student) to look at different ways that companies were mass customizing their offerings. In examining the findings, Jim and I realized that many companies customized the “product” (today we would use the term “economic offering”) while others customized the “representation” of the product – everything that didn’t offer product functionality, such as packaging, terms & conditions, and marketing messages – and of course some did both. So those were the axes of the 2x2, yielding Collaborative (both product and representation), Cosmetic (representation only), and Transparent customization (product only), but it left us with a box (naturally in the lower left) where no customization was done in either product or representation. So, we just said, essentially, “Ok, that’s where Mass Production must go, where everything is standardized”. But it nagged at us, for it was a framework of types of customization. By not just throwing our hands up and saying that quadrant didn’t count, we eventually discovered the fourth type of customization. This again involved neither product nor representation = adaptive customization, where a standard product customizes itself to the customer’s needs, either automatically (Gillette Sensor razor, eg) or via customer interaction (smartphone). The result was our first HBR together: James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II, “The Four Faces of Mass Customization”, Harvard Business Review, Vol 75, No 1, January/February 1997, pp. 91-101.
[v] See Table 9-1 in B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020), p. 224 and the surrounding text, as well as pp. 235-6 on “Following Through”.
[vi] The company later pivoted to become PivotPlanet, which now only gives out advice from experts in the various fields.