Personal Transformation

In my discussions with educators and business people about change and transformation it has become clear that one of the pre-requisites is ‘personal transformation’. Either there will be a ‘transformed’ person with a vision leading the change or the people involved in the change will need to go through a personal transformation.

One of the reasons for this is simple – that people cannot design something they are not familiar with (something that isn’t in their frame of reference). When asked to design something new people will generally design something similar to what they already know – unless they have new input, new information.

One of the places that new input comes from is people – and people that have gone through a personal change – a personal transformation – have a different point of view, and often, a different experience to bring to the design.

There are also several qualities of a person that has been through a personal transformation that I feel are important demonstrations of their change. A few of these qualities are:

• They can admit they are wrong – in public
• They can say they made a mistake – in public
• They can say, ‘I don’t know’ – in public

These are just a few of the qualities that inform us that this person is a learner and they are comfortable with their own learning and letting others see they are learning.

The Technology Everywhere Generation