This Thanksgiving: thankful to be learning.

Last month, I decided to enroll in a creative writing class at the professor’s invitation. My instructor, Anda Peterson, is also a member of my writing group. Our small team, affectionately known as the Prose Posse, consisted of accomplished academics and journalists. I was the only technical writer in the bunch–the odd man out.

Writing mostly for corporations, I have learned tasks I will never perform directly. Technical writers will tell you that some subjects stay in their heads long after the project ends. Like a YouTube kitten or snippet of music that loops mercilessly, pulling the memory through one ear with a wire hanger eventually seems like a good plan. I wish I could forget how to perform Upper Extremity Sonography so I could make room for the name of the craft beer I sampled yesterday and quickly forgot. It’s most likely hanging out with my lost wallet and my third grade teacher, whose name I cannot recall.


Technical writing and instructional design is also a highly structured and deliberate process. My inner editor is a style guide that screams line-by-line revisions and keeps me on a strict budget. Deliver key objectives in line one. Select images that reinforce performance. Use quizzes to verify comprehension.

In truth, that box we love to hate and long to think outside actually gives us something to work with - a canvas on which to express ourselves. As a friend once told me, "creativity is our ultimate expression within defined parameters." I love trying to be as creative as possible, even when working with corporate or regulated material. However, open-sky, unlimited vistas are another matter. That blank sheet of paper can be a daunting partner.

So, I was immediately humbled by the burgeoning talent in Anda's classroom. Students in pencil thin jeans cranked out prize-worthy prose mere hours before class. A volunteer would recite lyrical lines, revealing yet another captivating story. Earnest and callow hearts searching the evening stars for answers or diving into the abyss for dinner. I panicked. My first submission was due in two weeks. My creative vocabulary felt limited by comparison, reduced to words like “happy," and “really." Pulling dead weasels through a rusty pipe would have been easier and more entertaining.

Despite my trepidation, the class seemed to respect every submission. I discovered creative writing courses are possibly the most life affirming event beyond kindergarten. Everyone brought something to share and then applauded. I don’t remember ever clapping in accounting or project management classes. Charitably, my classmates withheld the withering criticism my work fully deserves, an act of kindness typically reserved for the disabled or elderly. Based on the stories they submitted, I wondered if one or two of them were receiving community service hours for listening to mine.

Last night, I shared my experiences with a neighbor and how I hoped to live long enough to read something published by my fellow students. In return, I owe them the favor of purchasing their first published work, as payment in kind for helping me learn.

Thanks Anda. And to my classmates - a very special thank you!

Moments with McDade!

My name is Debi McDade, and I travel the world - waaayyy too much. But, that makes for great experiences, and lots of stories to tell.

I meet many people everyday, from airport agents to harried hotel clerks to small children with no locks on their lips. Some people I like are hot-roasted nuts (especially the kids). Others are just plain nuts. ("Will you be my friend?" mmmm, can I take a pass on that?) The same goes for places, cities and businesses. In fact, some of my best stories are random encounters I have along the way.

Russ asked me to share my travels with you. Besides, he tends to write about work all the time, and I want to write about the silly stuff that happens in between, mostly when I least expect it.

My job: take the seriousity down a notch. Or twenty.

He might have created a monster, because I can think of three great moments to share with you right now...

Debi

Debi McDade is a performance consultant for a Fortune 500 company. She will be a guest contributor, sharing her experiences from the road with us here.

Not Your Grandfather's Career Path

Remember the traditional notion of a career ladder? Traditionally, a person began their career in an entry-level job, then moved into team or local management, then on to regional management, and ended their career in C-Level or executive leadership.

This required an employer-employee agreement. Two-way loyalty that, at most organizations, is outmoded or gone. Very few organizations promise lifetime employment or tenure. Some exceptions include government agencies or very large institutions with multiple layers of management.

So what is the new "normal" career?

* flatter organizations, and a "do more with fewer" reality
* new-hires that expect to work as creative agents for multiple employers within their lifetimes
* outsourcing and contracting as a business norm, not some radical experiment
* working from home or remote locations as part of the experience
* workers that leave if they do not enjoy the experience

The 21st Century career is a series of engagements (jobs) and life experiences that ultimately form a person's specialty or focus, that in turn enable them to move up, over or into any number of life experiences. In short, your emerging leaders want a rewarding experience, not a timecard to punch or a cubicle to occupy every day.

One of our clients asks new hires how they can best engage and get the most from them in a 21st Century work arrangement. They listen, modify, then follow up by letting the employees challenge themselves. And, it works!

"A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed.

It may also possess you completely.

Whatever; eventually it will call you out. It makes its claim."

James Hillman

The Soul's Code

Many years ago, I moved to Tallahassee, Florida with every intention of becoming a lawyer. After two years working for a law firm and passing the LSAT, I had every desire not to be a lawyer. I went to school anyway and pursued an advanced degree in business, not quite certain how I would apply it.

Thankfully, my personal life was rocking with creativity during those five years.

I met incredibly talented people with vastly diverse backgrounds. I sucked down fresh bay oysters with politicians, movie stars and assorted locals. We dove into inky green-blue sink holes the size of a city block – and infinitely deeper. Friends and I bought a camper van and traveled the Rockies (surviving an up close inspection by an odiferous grizzly), we traveled across the globe to work and study, we held hands with dying friends, sang ballads loudly and poorly around campfires on St. George Island, learned public speaking tips from one of the best professional speakers in America, observed the culinary skills of a world-famous television chef, took walks with one of our nation’s leading thinkers and painters, and…so much more.

I experienced a veritable odyssey of wonderful, meaningful and soul-changing experiences that continue to reverberate inside me. They made me the person I am today. The Universe slapped a giant “YES!” on my forehead, in the form of people who cared enough to put up with me, long enough to deliver their message.

Then, I entered corporate America. I dutifully shoved all those great learning moments into a memory box so secure it would make Steelcase proud.

In 1998, a client asked me to create a series of educational programs to be delivered in twelve modules over a period of two years. That’s a long time to spend with a few hundred people – it was more than a gig, it was a relationship!

Miraculously, we (they and I) pulled it off. Nobody died. We struggled through the basics: we explored core skills and generally discussed how to be good worker bees. Then, I wrote one course specifically for them. I called it: Make the Moment.

The module I wrote was not directly related to any core job skills or traditional topics like communication, teamwork, or time management. MTM was a course that explored life as a series of moments – the way seemingly insignificant events have the power to change our lives forever, and how we have the opportunity to create and/or participate in these moments on a daily basis. That class became a touchstone for the group. It’s power and honestly surprised me as much as it surely surprised them.

At the end of our time together, we celebrated with an emotion-filled dinner, where many of my new friends shared (unrehearsed) their stories of change and personal growth with peers, administrators and elected officials.

It was a humbling experience. What had started out as a routine transaction (deliver core skills training to a group) had turned into a life-altering event for many of us. It was also my first step toward a more meaningful life.

A year later, a pair of researchers, Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore published their first book, The Experience Economy. It quantified and validated everything I had been teaching. Life is more than a series of impersonal transactions, and the organizations that stage their services through mass customization are creating experiences. These experiences are what drive us to repeat purchases, tell others and generally fell more fulfilled about our lives.

Up to that point I had safely disconnected my professional career from all those wonderful personal experiences. I firmly held tight to the belief that business people should keep those two aspects of their lives very separate.

Since then, I have enjoyed several side-trips, dead-ends, fast-forward breakneck developments, self-inflicted wounds, healing conversations, organizations that did not leverage my talent (and where I did not deliver my best possible work) and work that felt like second nature, as if I was born for that particular challenge or project.

Finally–slowly–I realized that every single one of my experiences – whether personal or professional, good, bad, boring, awesome or something in between – are the kind of events that make all of us uniquely qualified for life on this planet. It is the sum of my existence that makes me better.

Fast-forward about ten years. We–myself included–seem to be obsessed by the tools and applications that supplement our lives. As Marshall Mcluhan once stated:

We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

The Internet is only a tool, yet one that is shaping us. Still what does this all mean for our flesh and blood existence?

At our core, we are all hard-wired for a fully engaged life with five amazing senses that allow us to learn through experience and reflection. I find the most engaging moments are created by interesting people, not their tools alone. The organizations with the most creative people are where I want to spend my spare time and dollars.

I sense a quiet evolution underway, led by a generation raised within this experience economy. They want a return to authenticity, free from manipulation and stagecraft. Those experiences have a profound impact on our work, business, and lives, whether online or face-to-face. Let's see what happens.

This is a loud cheer for anyone whose calling in life exceeds the technology and tools, those people who turn merely forgettable transactions into nearly magical moments simply by expressing their talent, purpose and ability. Thank you for showing the rest of us how to live more fully.

This is also an invitation of sorts, a time to say “yes” to our inner potential, to shut off the tools now and then (even if we use them well), and create great moments for our families, our co-workers, our clients, members, or customers…and of course, ourselves.