Transformations for Employees

How the concepts apply to your workers

I was surprised to realize recently that nowhere here on Substack have I really posted about how all these ideas apply to employees! And there’s no place in The Transformation Economy where I bring this subject together. I wrote a lot about what transforming customers means for your employees – there are around 100 references to workers in the book – but there are only a few places where I specifically talk about employee transformations.

So let me rectify that by pointing out the few places where I do and then share some articles, written before the book, actually, that provide much more on the subject.

Why You Should Guide Employee Transformations

Obviously, a core reason any business wants to guide employee transformations is to have better employees who contribute to the enterprise in making it more productive, effective, creative, innovative, and on and on the list of enterprise aspirations can go. You may recall the old line about an executive saying, “Why should I train my employees to become better when they’ll just take that knowledge and leave?”. To which the response is, “What if you don’t train your employees and they stay?”.

So don’t be that person. . . . As I wrote on p. 62 in chapter 3, “Understanding Aspirants and Aspirations”:

Learning and development departments exist solely for employee transformations, with benefits to the enterprise in higher-skilled employees and to the workers themselves in gaining knowledge and abilities to further their careers.

As you can see there, bettering the business is not the only, nor even the primary, reason to guide employee transformations; bettering employees is. The first place in the book where I bring up employment is in chapter 2, “Fostering Human Flourishing”, where on p. 30 I write:

Part and parcel of helping people better themselves as an enterprise is working to help your employees do so, from frontline workers to professionals, managers, executives, and the C-suite. Employees should never be treated as mere means to an end; as human beings, they are always ends in and of themselves. Employment with you is a means to the end of their own betterment, as they simultaneously help you foster the betterment of your customers.

You should guide employee transformations because it is the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, the fulfillment of your responsibility to foster human flourishing in the world.

Guide employee transformations in order to foster human flourishing in the world

In my first draft on purpose & meaning (which was edited out in the discussion of this sphere of transformation later in chapter 2), I wrote about how work is a key component of how people find meaning in life:

Work has forever had a certain dignity, being a core element of what it means to be human, although it’s not always recognized as such. There is much that businesses can do to better offer such meaning, but it can go too far. Carolyn Chen, a sociologist and professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, talks about how Silicon Valley companies (in general) have turned work into its own religion, liberally borrowed and transmuted from Hinduism and other Asian religions. In her insightful book Work Pray Code, she points out the reason for the corporate focus on mindfulness, meditation, spirituality-based coaching, and such practices is “to ensure that the human worker can produce at his or her highest capacity. Corporate maternalism’s spirituality is instrumental – a means to an end, not an end in itself.”^[1] And as Immanuel Kant proclaimed, treating human being instrumentally – as a means to an end – is immoral.^[2]

Bottom line: foster employee flourishing through the transformations you guide for them.

Where to Start in Guiding Employee Transformations

On a recent podcast I was asked what the first thing companies should do to offer transformations. My standard answer for that has long been that they need to embrace, believe, and firmly state that they are in the transformation business. Everything follows from that. In the moment, however, I realized, no, what really would be more effective is to first uncover your meaningful purpose as a business – the reason you exist beyond making a buck.

Uncovering your meaningful purpose is transformational for your business

That alone is transformational for your business, your organization, and especially your employees. As I wrote on p. 103 and 107 in chapter 5 on “Staging Transformative Experiences” on the need for a meaningful purpose:

As with an experience theme, a meaningful purpose faces inward and manifests outward. It inspires, aligns, and directs workers in order that the organization can create economic value for customers in ways that fulfill the purpose. All companies should embrace this concept for the meaning it offers employees (beginning, not ending, at the top!), as well as to enable the business to thrive through the ongoing value it creates for customers.

Embracing it is particularly crucial for transformation guiders because of the deep emotional labor that your employees naturally put into their work, and the deeply individual nature of transforming aspirants from the inside out. You want all contributors to ascend to the proposition stated in your purpose, even if it means some leave, and all new hires, partners, suppliers likewise should know and agree with the purpose before they join. Without that, alignment is lost and meaning is muddled.

The good news is that, unless you’re a startup, you should never make your meaningful purpose out of whole cloth. Don’t conjure it up; again, uncover what it already is, taking particular account of the heritage of your company (it’s origin + history as Jim Gilmore and I put it in Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, p. 121ff). Then figure how to state, promulgate, and inculcate it into the organization, using the guidelines on p. 103 to do so.

As I conclude the above section on the subject (pp. 106-7):

Meaningful purpose is a wonderful way to foster flourishing with everyone the organization touches. Imagine what a difference it would make in your business to be that intentional about the work everyone does. And what a difference it would make across the world if every other enterprise did as well.

Deploying a Transformation Platform

The only other place where I wrote about employee transformations is in the context of transformation platforms in Chapter 5, “Staging Transformative Experiences”. In a box on p. 117, “Digital Modularity and AI”, I give the example of B2B coaching company BetterUp:

Each of the transformation platforms mentioned in this book already uses artificial intelligence—if not the generative kind, then machine learning, its more mature, less capable cousin—with much more to come thanks to continuing progress in the field, including recognizing the power of intelligent augmentation. For example, in 2025 BetterUp, the transformation platform that connects employees and individuals to coaches, enhanced its offering with AI coaches customized to “personality, preferred learning style, and organizational culture” as well as “strategic business metrics, aligning with leadership frameworks, competencies and employees’ professional journeys.” The professional coaches aren’t automated by the AI; rather, they together offer a “dynamic blend of support—from AI-powered insights available 24/7 to deep, meaningful connections with expert human coaches.”[3]

There are now many such platforms that can help you guide employee transformations, including one I mentioned on p. 119 that relates to the earlier discussion on meaningful purpose: “Benevity, which helps companies engage their employees in charitable giving and volunteering that enhances business purpose and offers employees meaning.”

Many platforms that can help you guide employee transformations

After that I launched into an extended conversation about Echo360, which

offers a customizable eLearning platform that works with educational, corporate, and government institutions to better engage learners and ensure greater educational outcomes. (Disclosure: I work with Echo360 in an advisory capacity.) The company recognizes that it has three distinct constituencies: administrators, instructors, and learners. Administrators—the customers who buy the platform—want courses that help instructors effectively create, stage, and assess learning experiences for the benefit of the people who consume the content. Echo360’s platform mass customizes for each constituency to inspire learners to achieve their educational goals, encourage instructors to get into flow and improve their performance, and enable administrators to create collaborative environments that yield the educational outcomes they value most for their organizations.

Note that the second of Echo360’s constituencies, instructors, are generally employees of the organization, who are specifically buying it so they become better instructors. Sometimes, though, they are contractors, another audience for which companies should also think about creating experiences & transformations, for the success of their business depends on them as well.

Might you deploy a transformation platform for your employees?

Might there be a transformation platform that you could deploy for your employees, perhaps one that also enables transformations of your customers, as with Echo360? If not, I imagine there will be soon – and perhaps you will see that, too, as a business opportunity for your own company in today’s Transformation Economy!

Staging Experiences & Guiding Transformations for Employees

Note the use of the phrase “experiences & transformations” above. It is important to not just think about the transformations you offer employees but the experiences you stage for them, as the former are built on the latter, and there will be some experiences, not necessarily designed to be transformative, that will be life-altering for particular employees at particular times.

It’s important to stage experiences for your employees as well