Personal Transformation

A lot has been said about leadership and the need for leadership to drive innovation in an organization. In many cases, creating an innovation culture creates a transformation in the organization.

In my discussions with educators and business people about change and transformation it has become clear that one of the pre-requisites for transformation that is not your top down, dictated, transformation is for leaders that have been through a 'personal transformation'. This means 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 as part of the change process.

One of the reasons for this is simple - 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 or new models.

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

There are also several qualities of a leader or a person that has been through a personal transformation that I feel are important demonstrations or evidence 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

In my opinion, these are also characteristics of leaders that will be successful in the 21st Century as it is nearly impossible for any one person to be able to see clearly and keep up with the pace of change we are experiencing.

These characteristics inform us that this person is not just a leader but they are also a learner and they are comfortable with their own learning (and letting others see they are learning).