Oftentimes people try to use the wrong delivery method for the kind of content they are conveying. Here, I am going to talk about three different kinds of content, and how they differ in how best to deliver them.

The three types of content we will be discussing are formational, informational, and transformational. Of these types of content, you are probably most familiar with informational content, as we are inundated with it in the information age. In fact, that is probably the primary problem I am addressing here. In the information age, we address all content as if it were informational content that can be delivered by informational means. In fact, we do have the best information delivery systems that have ever existed in human history. But information is not the only type of content we encounter. The attempt to shove every type of content into this one category makes us less effective at understanding the others.

So let’s talk about what these terms mean. Informational content is data and skills. When I turn on a YouTube video, I learn how to do something, how something works, or some interesting fact about history. If I want to learn how to properly re-grout my shower, information is what I need.

Information Is Not Enough

Formational content is one of the most forgotten types of content in the modern age.  We tend to forget that who we are today is the result of the many decisions, experiences, habits, and practices that we made leading up to today. In order to raise the next generation, we must remember that they don’t just need information. They need practice and direction in their decisions, leadership through their experiences, templates for good habits, and a set of practices which will shape their future thoughts and actions. They also need stories (real or fictional) to provide a basis for reflection, patterning, and acquiring aspirations and aversions. Information is about external knowledge while formation is about the nuances of being a person.

Transformational content deals with reshaping people. Nobody has perfect formational experiences, and everybody needs course corrections along the way. Transformational content is about helping people recognize the flaws in the way they are today, helping them change direction, and reforming themselves to make the new direction endure. This includes new information as to what the problem is and how the solution works, what specifically needs changing, habits and practices to solidify the change, and accountability structures to make sure the change happens.

As you can see, formational and transformation content are both radically different from informational content. As a society, while we have excelled in informational content delivery, we have often diminished the importance of formational and transformational content, simply because we can’t deliver it entirely using the tools of the information age.

So, this article is itself a bit of a paradox that is core to the problem of the information age. I am suggesting a transformation, but I am only using informational means to do so. My hope is that people can recognize the transformations they need to make, and provide the rest of the transformational details themselves.

So what would such a process look like? The first thing is to simply recognize the difference between formational, informational, and transformational content. A good case study for this difference is in sexual harassment training in corporations. This is content that is best delivered formationally, or, if there is an existing problem, transformationally. It is about more than just practices, as one could not possibly enumerate the various human interactions and be clear about which ones are in-bounds or out-of-bounds. A formational approach would look to see if practices could be implemented which would, over time, change the way people thought about one another. A simple example would be to establish formal office courtesies (such as knocking before entering an office) which allowed people to practice respect for each other continually throughout the day.

Many of the customs and traditions of the past were instances of formational content. In modern times, we have generally disregarded and discarded everything that is not strictly informational. It is true that many of the formational practices of previous ages don’t work directly for the modern age. The solution is not to abandon formational practices altogether, but to intentionally establish new ones. The information age has made us wizards at distributing information, but we need to relearn our abilities to disseminate formation and transformation as well if we want to help people truly grow.