Recently, I was speaking with an organization about their social media presence. The head of the group spoke passionately about their commitment to ‘transformation’ and sure enough, ‘transformational’ was used twice on the front page of the website. It was in the title of one of the seven different menu selections and was in the title of the main block on the front page.

Looking a little bit deeper, they talked about transformation in terms of pursuing excellence, doing research, and training the next generation. Yet it didn’t jump out at me. Why? I suspect it was about more than just the font choices or color selections. It seems like everyone claims to be seeking transformation and pursuing excellence. I mean, common, who but a few wacky politicians are going to seek mediocrity or seek to turn back the clock of progress?

In writing, I’ve always been told to try and show something, not just tell people something. Show me how you are being transformational, don’t just tell me that it is what you are trying to do.

It was with this in mind that I attended the second session of Story.lab. Ken Janke continued his discussion about understanding the missions of our lives as stories we’ve been living and have yet to write. He spoke about transformation as the keyword for his story and how running storylab at the new coworking space, The Grove, in New Haven is part of this story. (See Jack Nork’s blog post about Friday’s meeting for more information, and especially, pay attention to Darius Goes West.)

Ken challenged us to think about the keyword for our own stories, and a few different keywords were presented; connectivity, engagement, and creativity.

This was from a group of people closely related to another group in New Haven. This second group has been talking about marketing and moving people’s engagement with a brand from the left side of a chart indicating low engagement to the right side where people are engaged in advocating for the brand.

I’ve often thought in similar ways about political engagement. We need to move people from not registered and not paying attention to paying attention, to registered, to getting out and voting, to getting involved in issues and campaigns, and perhaps even to running for office.

It seems as if all of these ideas come together into a path of transformation. The starting point is to get people connected and engaged. These two ideas are closely linked. By connecting with people that are engaged, new people become engaged, and as new people become engaged they establish more connections with other engaged people.

Yet being connected and engaged is just a starting point. When I spent time talking about the book Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope: Lessons from the Howard Dean Campaign for the Future of Internet Politics, I often spoke about what I like to call the ‘invitation to innovate’. The Dean campaign knew that they needed something special, something different, something new to make a difference, and they invited those supporters who had become connected and engaged to innovate new ways of getting out the political message.

To return to the storylab workshop, this is where the creativity comes in. As we connect and engage people, we need to invite them to be creative. We may have to help them learn new tools that they can use to express their creativity. Then, as groups of connected, engaged and creative people emerge, we can get real transformation.

Will this happen at storylab? Amongst my online marketing friends? Or at the organization I mentioned? I sure hope so. Meanwhile, I will do what I can to get people more engaged in their missions, to connect with one another, to create new ways of doing things that can transform our lives around us.