Designing Transformative Experiences: The New View of Leadership Using the ELVIS Methodology
Brad McLain
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (May 2023)

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.” Henry Ford

In this volume, Brad McLain offers what is characterized as “a toolkit for leaders, trainers, teachers, and other experience designers.” As I began to read this book, I was again reminded of a press conference years ago after several days of negotiation hosted by U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1978. Israel’s Prime Minister (Menachem Begin) and Egypt’s President (Anwar Sadat) reached several agreements. They were asked, “How did they do that after so many years of bloodshed?” Begin replied, “We did what all wise men do. We began at the end.”

Those who hope to create transformative experiences take the same approach. According to McClain, “In my research, I define transformative experiences as learning experiences that have an identity impact, changing the experiencer’s sense of self in some important way — who you believe yourself to be or who you aspire to become. In almost all cases I have studied, have studied, people describe their most transformative experiences as having multiple deep impacts that ripple through every area of their lives and are durable (or even amplified) over time. Think again of your own most transformative experience so far. Is this true for you as well?”

Ford’s observation quoted earlier correctly stresses the importance of having the right attitude to achieve an objective. That’s the WHAT and people have specific reasons or purposes in mind, the WHY. The challenge remains: HOW to do that objective? With rare exception, the answer has two parts: design and implementation. Hence the unique importance of having the right methodology. McClain recommends ELVIS (Experiential Learning Variables & Indicators System).

This methodology” includes a framework for understanding how transformative experiences work and a design toolkit with seven key experiential design elements [Risk, Control, Immersion, Social & Emotional Involvement, Intellectual Challenge, Identity Matters, and Meaning Making] and the ELVIS Design Matrix.” McLain adds, “But there’s more. It’s not just our human psychobiology that helps explain these commonalities and the reason why ELVIS is so powerful. The human heart is central to the questions of how and why transformative experiences occur.”

Begin’s explanation cited earlier offers a useful reminder that creating almost anything  — especially transformative experiences —  must begin with identifying the ultimate objective. Is this the right question to answer?  Is this the right problem to solve? Peter Drucker once observed, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

I commend McLain on his brilliant application of design principles to the cluster of insights on which the ELVIS methodology is based. More specifically: Research your users’ needs, problems, aspirations, apprehensions, etc.; specify them; challenge assumptions and create tentative (prototypic) solutions;  and then, rigorously test them. There are dozens of uniquely helpful “designer tips” throughout the lively and eloquent narrative. (Check the Index for specific tips that are most relevant to your needs and interests.) The object of designing transformative experiences is to create what I view as a context for opportunity.  The nature and extent of that opportunity — as well as the nature and extent of the experiencer’s response — will of course vary. That is why the ELVIS methodology  is by design flexible and resilient.

In this book, Brad McLain provides an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that can help almost any leader, trainer, teacher, or another experience designer to place almost anyone’s identity at the edge of discovery, on the frontiers that can be found both beyond [them] and within [them], rather than tucked safely inside a comfort zone, or where our expectations rule us all.” He adds, “I’ll end this book the same way that I end my workshops, with a simple message that holds the key to life itself: may we all, in the words of Eugene Bell Jr., [begin italics] Aspire to Inspire Before We expire [end italics].”

Here are two suggestions while reading Designing Transformative Experiences: Highlight key passages, and, keep a lined notebook near at hand  in which you record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), and page references as well as completion of exercises and responses to questions inserted throughout the narrative. These two simple tactics will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key material later.