This post completes the chapter on the Delta Model, tentatively entitled “From Experiences to Transformation Offerings”. It follows the Introduction to the Delta Model and the box on Quasi-Transformations, and provides the description of the fourth quadrant of the Types of Transformations framework posted last week.
Metamorphic transformations are the highest level on the Delta Model, representing life-altering transformations that help aspirants – people, organizations, businesses, and communities – achieve their aspirations for metamorphosis, large-scale change in kind, not just degree. Note that the final section in this post, Applying the Delta Model, references all types of transformations.
Enjoy, and please do provide me with feedback on it through the link at the bottom of the post.
Joe
Metamorphic Transformations
The top segment of the Delta Model represents transformation offerings, just as the middle segment does, but they prove so distinct from the rest they deserve this special place as the delta atop the Delta. Metamorphic transformations change aspirants both in kind and on a large scale. In particular, such transformations change an aspirant’s core identity in one or more elements, resulting, as discussed with the Types of Aspirations framework in chapter 3, a metamorphosis, altering who we are.
Altering Transformations
While I mentioned many examples of metamorphosis in chapter 3, they’re worth repeating here: starting the first job, graduating from college, permanently departing home, joining the army, becoming a manager or an Olympian, changing from a mom-and-pop shop to a franchisor, becoming a homeowner, leaving a salaried job to become an entrepreneur, retiring, experiencing the death of a spouse, getting cancer, and recovering from a long battle with it.
Think about that last one, recovering from cancer. If you (or a loved one) have been treated for cancer you know how it starts as a major disruption in your life. When you hear those words from a doctor, “You have cancer”, it confirms your worst fears and immediately it changes your identity. (And often, you do not really hear or comprehend the next five or 10 minutes of what the doctor says.) You are now a person who has cancer. While from what I have read and heard it would be much better to think “I am me experiencing cancer”,[1] that mindset jujitsu is tough to keep up over the long period required and cannot mask the basic fact: you have cancer.
Think about recovering from cancer
What does it take to recover from it? First of all, a great medical team: doctors, nurses, technicians, and others with the expertise to treat cancer and handle any other curative issues. But as in all cases within the health & wellbeing sphere of transformations, treating your symptoms and diseases is not enough; your whole person needs to be treated as well, including emotional, physical, psychological, and even spiritual issues that inevitably arise in such situations. You will need wise counsel, along with instruction and coaching not only on your care path but on living your life with cancer, which the medical team cannot furnish on its own. You need the support of loved ones, family, friends, colleagues, clergy, and often therapists of differing stripes. With effective treatment, great support, and good fortune your support system can take you through from crisis to recovery, where you can finally say you are cancer-free.
When it comes to undergoing metamorphic transformations, then, you are best served by having the care, support, and guidance of experts, coaches, and counselors all – the three primary roles for enhancing, expanding, and enriching transformations. And that requires a fourth role, that of guiding the overall altering transformation: knowing when to use, take on, or bring in each of the other roles, keeping the aspirational outcome in mind, managing the inevitable downs and ups of the transformation journey, and always keeping the individual, living, breathing human being (or beings in the case of organizational or communal transformations) at the forefront of everything that happens.
Think of this fourth role particular to metamorphic transformations as that of an alchemist. The term originally referred to one who transmuted elements, particularly metals into gold – a metamorphosis – and while it was often associated with nefarious schemes and “magic”, alchemy was in fact a forerunner to modern chemistry (both etymologically and historically). Today it refers to the altering of one thing into another or to someone’s reinvention, particularly when seemingly magical because of the extent of change. So, while the term may seem strange at first, it really does fit the role required of any metamorphosis.[2] For good reason Merriam-Webster describes its modern-day meaning as “someone who transforms things for the better”.[3]
Think of the guide for metamorphic transformations as an alchemist
And it is a role, not necessarily an individual person. As with other types of transformations, but perhaps particularly with metamorphic ones, people often act as their own “general contractor”, and sometimes family, friends, colleagues, or mentors fill that (unpaid) role. But as we shift into the Transformation Economy, people, businesses, and communities again increasingly seek help in achieving their aspirations from companies. This is true not just particularly but perhaps especially for metamorphic, life-altering transformations, precisely because they are so vast, entail a journey into the unknown (epistemically speaking), more likely come with great trepidation, and change elements of core identity.
Perhaps remedial transformations are most prevalent with metamorphosis, as illustrated by cancer, which requires recovery. Think of how great and life-altering are such transformations as stop drinking, quit smoking, stop taking drugs, end gambling, or discontinue any other addiction. Each one necessarily wraps up in core aspects of identity (else they would be easier to halt) – even if addicts, after the Alcoholics Anonymous program, so often deign themselves as addicts always, but ones who have not partaken for X number of days. I can’t argue with the results, but in most cases it still seems better, as with expanding transformations, to re-frame the transformation as a positive rather than a remedial one, to aspire to live drink-free, to be a non-smoker, or simply to go from “a person who experiences drugs” to “a person who experiences life naturally”.
Commitment is absolutely crucial with altering transformations
In any case, commitment is not just important with altering transformations but absolutely crucial. Aspirants can’t foresee what large-scale, core identity changes truly mean for them and how they alter their identity. Without commitment to see the transformation through, it has nary a chance of success; the contrast is just too great, too stark, too unknowable. Altering transformations may also require much more handholding, involve many twists and turns and backsliding, and take much longer to achieve. But your role as an alchemist is to ensure that customers do in fact achieve these high-bar, high-value aspirations.