Why This Matters Now

We offer this document with humility—and with urgency.

No single individual, organization, or framework owns Experience Management. This discipline has been shaped over decades by scholars, practitioners, leaders, and organizations striving to better understand how humans experience the world and create value within it. Despite that, the lack of community for the advancement of the practice is now paying the price as the industry comes under fire because of very significant lack of impact.

Social media, non-peer reviewed self-publishing and the lack of academic rigor has led to significant fragmentation and advantages taken by companies with deep pockets, self-proclaimed independent gurus vs. a collaborative view of unlearning industrial age practices have taken its toll and it’s a time to reform, unlearn, and think differently. 

And yet, despite this progress, we find ourselves at a critical inflection point. Experience is the building block of life. It’s like Legos® snaped together with what they refer to as clutching power. Carefully engineered connections. We need to insure we understand and develop advanced tools that create emotional clutching power.

Experience was never meant to be reduced to dashboards, scores, or proxy measures. It was meant to be designed—intentionally, emotionally, and systemically—because experience is how people make sense of their lives, their work, and the organizations they trust and have emotional resonance. 

Advances in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science now leave little doubt: emotion and rationality are inseparable. Together, they shape judgment, memory, trust, and choice. As Agentic AI accelerates decision-making and scales interaction at unprecedented speed, the consequences of ignoring this truth grow exponentially.

This moment calls not for another trend, but for collective responsibility. Do you accept and commit to making a difference?

The Experience Management Reformation Credo™

By choosing to endorse and advance this Reformation, we affirm the following shared beliefs:

• Experience is the value we create everyday constructed emotionally and rationally by the human mind customers, employees, patients, stakeholders and other human beings.

• Emotion is not opposed to reason; it is what gives reason direction and meaning.

• Memory is the mechanism through which experiential value endures or erodes.

• Experience Management must be re-founded as a discipline, not optimized as a simple collection of  “old” tools with new names.

• Design must lead measurement; metrics validate outcomes but must never replace intent.

• Agentic AI raises the stakes of Experience Management—it does not diminish its importance.

• Experience is systemic and shared across employees, customers, partners, and communities. It is not comprised of bolted on incongruent plays for efficiency at the risk of efficiency.

• The field must come together now; fragmentation weakens both impact and credibility.

• Business metrics are the ultimate test—but they are not the ultimate question.

Community as the Engine of Reform

The Experience Management Reformation™ is grounded in community. It’s not an association, it’s not certification, it’s reformative “community think tank”.

By community, we mean a disciplined community of practice for people willing to learn and unlearn from one another, to challenge assumptions respectfully, and to place stewardship of the field above individual acclaim.

This community exists to:

• Advance Experience Management beyond trends and surface-level adoption to much greater depth and move beyond broken to creating distinctive economic and emotional value.

• Integrate human science with practical business application by looking at the systemic nature of fusing AI rather than bolting Ai.

• Preserve the intellectual lineage while responsibly evolving practice

• Hold the discipline accountable to real-world results and metrics that are not trophy’s, but metrics that are significant, repeat customers, actual referrals, pricing elasticity and emotional resonance etc. 

Reform does not endure through declarations alone. It endures through shared work.

Provocateur  and Stewards

The Reformation is guided, not owned, by provocateurs who serve as stewards of the discipline.

Their role is to question orthodoxy, elevate rigor, and help ensure that Experience Management remains grounded in human reality and business impact.

Lou Carbone – The provocateur advancing the distinction between managing experiences, customer service, etc. to engineering experiences with precise scientific approaches as foundations for emotional resonance and value creation.

Lou’s esteemed colleagues on this mission are Matthew Murray, and Kimberly Peters, colleagues, supporters of unlearning and thinking differently. They both hold the first Master of Science in CX Management degrees from Michigan State University, Broad School of Management. They are special, they are unique, they are inspired and fully committed.

These stewards do not act above the community, but within it—provoking thought, encouraging collaboration, and inviting others to help shape what comes next.

Accountability and Results

This Reformation is unapologetically accountable.

Experience Management must ultimately prove its value through business results—growth, loyalty, efficiency, trust, and long-term viability.

But while metrics are the ultimate test, they must never become the ultimate question. When metrics lead, meaning erodes. When design leads, measurement becomes meaningful.

Our responsibility is to design experiences worthy of measurement—and worthy of trust.

A Shared Commitment

To endorse this document is to accept responsibility:

• Responsibility to work together in concert and break down the silos in the industry instead of casting stones at companies for the silos that exist therein. It’s the blind leading the blind!

• Responsibility to advance Experience Management as a foundational discipline.

• Responsibility to resist dilution by trends or convenience.

• Responsibility to work together—across roles, industries, and perspectives.

This Reformation is not complete. It is beginning.

Its success depends on the willingness of many to expand it, challenge it, and champion it—with humility, rigor, and resolve.

Sign the commitment wall now and insure you’re openminded and committed to making a difference in leveraging the power of experiences. Yes, there is the Experience Economy, there may be other fads, approaches, however, powerful memories and experiences are the currency of value in business and in life.

Sign the wall embrace the Credo and consider this a Manifesto!