As you may know, I’ve been working as a freelance communications consultant for the past year, while blogging about professional shifts and opportunities and my new appreciation for living a bit more organically.

One of my organic opportunities has been getting to know Gretchen DeVault, Eric Quigley, and Emily Butkus at DVQ Studio, a Grand Rapids-based brand and communications agency. After months of talking shop and partnering with them on a new project, I am excited to announce that I am officially joining their team!

A few ingredients have made this the right move:

A commitment to learning and sharing. I’ve started to believe the most telling question you can ask about a potential relationship is how (or whether) the other person or organization learns and shares that learning with others. They do not have to learn exactly like you do, but there is so much to be gained if you value learning in similar ways.

One of the first things Gretchen, Eric, and I discussed was an opportunity for non-profit organizations to learn more about their brands and new communications approaches. In one of the most fun and learning-friendly collaborations I’ve had the privilege to join, we’ve created and are now launching the Emerging Communications Series, a free six-part experience for local non-profits (still time to join us — registration deadline is July 24).

A genuine understanding of collaboration. I’m the fourth team member at DVQ Studio and the first non-designer. I wish I could really express how excited this makes me… too often, design is not fully recognized in strategy and designers are only viewed as implementers. DVQ is the right size and of the right mindset to value each communications discipline in an equitable and strategic way.

A focus on socially-driven organizations. We’ve talked a lot about focusing on non-profit organizations and small businesses that strive to be socially responsible. We believe the unique needs of mission-driven clients call for a special skill set, one that we’ve developed through our collective experiences as non-profit staff members, volunteers, and consultants. I’m eager to support the good work DVQ has already begun with many local non-profits and help them expand that work.

I’ll have more to share as this experience progresses. In the meantime, if you’re interested in communications insight and resources, please give DVQ a follow on Twitter. And if you’re connected to non-profits in West Michigan, we’d love to have your support in spreading the word about the Emerging Communications Series.

For the first time, I feel change and connections happening organically. I’m meeting people and talking about new ideas at a clip that I can almost feel but that I did not “push”.

The challenge with connections and ideas bubbling up like this is that too often, you notice it happening only through a passing glance or in complete retrospect, sometimes when it’s too late to take full advantage of an opportunity, or sometimes when it’s too early and you’re not ready to trust the potential.

In the past, this hasn’t set well with someone like me, who believes challenges should be anticipated, opportunities are everywhere, and personal expectations have to be high to be prepared. I’ve believed that a good plan is the only bridge from where I am now to those opportunities.

This was obvious in how I planned for this year. I said I wanted to have a more creative year. I shaped that goal into a stringent plan, believing the disconnect between my life and its creativity was a matter of structure. What I’ve learned is that my creativity was actually lacking space.

This year feels like it could be one of my most creative yet, despite having abandoned the rigorous system I established for myself, as well as my structured definition of creativity. I wanted to finish a book, write a lot of poetry, and be a creative writer. Instead, I’ve met a lot of new people, identified a lot of new opportunities, and discovered new questions to ask about myself and my community.

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide this would happen. I don’t know what clicked along the way that left me with this approach, but I can point to a few factors that must have been influential:

Space. Without a doubt, working on a mix of projects between my family businesses, consulting, and community groups has allowed me to explore opportunities freely. Time is my own currency now… my success is judged based on the results of my efforts rather than the number of hours invested (and when and where they were invested).

Experience. I’m starting to sense the difference experience makes, and now I want to reframe that word. The mistake we’ve made as it relates to experience is equating it to qualification. The power of my life and professional experiences is not that they make me more or less qualified… instead, they make me more steady and empathetic, help me gain exposure more easily to new people and networks, and in turn reduce some of the risk of living without a tight plan.

Trust. Planning is a great way to cover deficiencies in experience. You might plan more the first time you visit a city than the second time. This urgency to plan and anticipate is connected in some way to matters of trust. I didn’t trust my college advisor and her thoughts on my college journey, so I created a plan that showed her it’s possible to graduate in three years. Ok, impressive maybe. But it reinforced an unhealthy expectation/assumption: if you have a great plan, you’ll get to a great spot, and you’ll get there more efficiently than the next guy. Or, put another way, trust the plan more than the desired outcome.

This isn’t about regret, but it is about reflection. Regret undermines experience, which in turn would change where I am now. And I like where I’m at. Appreciating that one way of living (and planning) got me here helps me realize I’m in the midst of recreating that (or letting it recreate itself, I guess) to see where I land next.

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve mentioned it to some of my favorite older, wiser people locally. One person who essentially makes plans for a living told me she’s never had one for her life… I was probably unreasonably surprised by this. I’m really curious now about other people’s stories and their own process for planning or not planning, identifying new opportunities, etc. Especially as we lose some of the traditional structures for getting from point A to point B, will flexibility and space become the values, rather than structures, formulas, and plans?

Earlier this week I read “The price of saying no at work”, hoping to find practical suggestions for how to say no and still be successful. Instead I discovered the suggestion that for women, career ladders are revealed only for those who say yes and keep saying yes.

The women interviewed agree: you can say no at any time. If you don’t like the consequences of the ambitious “yes” life (which the women say include everything from forgetting birthdays to unleashing “untold brutality” on their marriages) you can opt out. But know that “ you will have narrowed the opportunities,” according to one woman.

Not only do I not agree with this kind of thinking, but if this is the approach older professional women take to career development, then I’m starting to understand why I have observed disconnects around mentoring.

Women’s history can be a guide for why this is happening. From the perspective of my generation: Our great-grandmothers could not vote for part of their lives, and our grandmothers could not work except within strict stereotypes. Our mothers were the first generation of women for which opportunity opened up. It still was not easy or freely given, but it was more than earlier generations had enjoyed. Our mothers’ civic influence was enhanced in the 1970s, their personal development was encouraged by measures like Title IX, their careers were fostered thanks to higher attendance in college (and the social understanding that they would or should have a career at all).

Many of the women who now run companies and mastered the career ladders the article refers to arrived on the professional scene at a time when women could finally attempt to have it all, yet they still had to do it all to make that possible. So it’s not surprising they feel they had to say yes to everything – was there really another option?

But I don’t think this approach is relevant anymore or healthy. Besides the personal turmoil the “yes” life can create, my generation has seen consequences that undermine the supposed rewards of this approach. We’re watching companies crumble, taking the assets and benefits promised to their longstanding employees down with them.

Based on these realities and other factors, I think young women in my generation tend to be more holistic when it comes to decision-making, priority-setting, and to assessing consequences of both. In general, I think  young professionals today are too entrepreneurial and open-minded to perceive “yes” and “no” opportunities. There is never truly a “narrowing” of opportunities. There is only a shifting of opportunities until we get to the life we want, and even the understanding of what we want may change over time.

And at least for me, that’s okay. I left a rewarding job with ample opportunity at a communications firm to work for my family business. I took a 50 percent cut in my pay to do it. Those yes-women would probably be ashamed of me and signed off on my career.

The problem was never the kind of work I was doing – it was how I was doing it and how it aligned with the life I wanted. So a year later, I’ve shifted again, working fewer hours at the family business and providing communications consulting to nonprofits. I’m financially consistent with where I was before despite working less, and I’m thinking of starting a business. These are not my most important indicators of success by any means, but they reassure me that I may have said no to one opportunity, but it was the most catalytic “no” decision I’ve ever made.

So I guess I’ll say what I expected the article to say:

• Knowing yourself well and identifying what you need to be personally happy and professionally fulfilled is a skill – develop it in that way. Self-knowledge will sharpen your intuition when decisions need to be made, and knowing your priorities will give you permission to say “no” when what seems like an opportunity is actually a misfit career or personal move.
• Identifying decision-making points and making intentional decisions is more important than whether your answer is yes or no. If you anticipate opportunities and evaluate them intentionally, you can’t make a bad decision. You can only make the decision that is best for you at that time.
• Our lives are more connected than we know, and our careers are more circular than we know. If you say no now, I believe there is still a chance that opportunity may return at a time when it is a better fit. What matters most are the relationships you keep. Opportunities don’t emerge from businesses or titles; they come from relationships and learning. Stay connected to those who relate to your career ambitions – chances are good they will be your conduits to knowledge or decisions affecting your career.

I thought my urge to set aside creative time was completely related to the lack of writing I have produced over the last few years. Yet the more I try to commit to my plan for creativity in 2009, the more I struggle to make it work just the way I wanted and produce the writing I expected. My attempts to write fiction and poetry have been poor, and not just because I’m still working on a creative routine. It feels as though creative writing is actually boring me a little.

I know that I’m making excuses to some extent. Saying something is boring is a convenient way to practice avoidance… I know that if I churned out more crappy poetry, I would (or I trust I would?) eventually start digging up meaningful words again. I have yet to “walk off” the creative stinger I’ve been hit with over the past three or four years.

But coupled with these natural pains of starting again is an urge I did not expect at the beginning of this process. A lot of my creative energy seems to be bubbling up around potential business ideas. I spend more time thinking about business ideas than I do writing, and I find that thinking more interesting than I do the creative writing. I’ve also been taking on additional freelance work, pulling back to only a couple days a week working at the family business.

I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to be more intentional about this, create a business plan, and form a company. In addition to freelance consulting, I’d like to dabble in developing some of the web and knowledge sharing ideas I’ve had. It’s been established that an economy like this is good for entrepreneurial risk-taking… although I don’t view these potential directions as risks. I view them as natural extensions of opportunities I already have, a way to capitalize on relationships and strengths I’m already developing. If anything, I wonder what would happen if I didn’t get serious and formalize my work as a business now. Would I miss opportunities? Would I lose the chance to leverage connections or knowledge that could help me be more successful?

These are broad hypothetical questions, but I find myself asking them a lot. I’ve asked them ever since I was 14. I feel so fortunate to have had early, ample exposure to entrepreneurs. These included my dad, who started his business when I was 14. Since that time, I’ve watched him grow it carefully to the humble, strong company it is now. In some ways, the company was wildly ahead of its time. In other ways, we are a few years too late on some innovations, like our emerging green product line. My dad started using green cleaners for pest management in a local school district in the 1990s. Instead of innovating a company and a product line at that time (he had three little kids and was obviously more risk averse), he shared the idea with others. Now it feels like we are playing a bit of catch-up in that regard.

Given these experiences, and knowing that I am already semi-invested in a consulting career, I feel a strong pull to let myself dive in more intentionally. And that can be creative in its own right, I think. Maybe it’s actually the best way for me to express and merge my creative and analytical sides? I’m just not completely sure what it looks like yet. I’ve been browsing a lot of websites, comparing my skills to those of other communications consultants, thinking about a target audience of potential clients (presumably non-profits, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions), and drafting summaries of my strengths and capabilities.

I’d be interested to hear from others who have gone through a similar process, or those who care to speculate on what they might do in the same situation! If you are a full-time business owner now and were once a casual freelancer, how did you make that leap? What were the indicators that told you it was time to get more serious?

The second post in a series about the millennial generation and generational issues. Read the first post for more background: The Millennial Generation: Not just young. We really are different.

So if the millennial generation is truly distinct, what are the values that define us and our view of the world? It’s my perception (after lots of reading and conversations with friends and colleagues) that three principles work in tandem to inform a millennial’s personal direction and his or her sense of achievement:

Passion
Energy, excitement and commitment related to an issue, organization, philosophy, principle, and/or pursuit. The drive and satisfaction that come with knowing not only do you care deeply and the work is rewarding, but you are providing unique value to your passion and enhancing it for others who also care about it.

I find that the passionate, visionary streak in the millennial generation really shines when we are collaborating with others or helping to connect people as a way of advancing an idea, a shared value, or a desired direction. This makes the millennial generation naturally inclusive, engaging many voices in many different ways to advance our passions. Because our intuition is so keen on authenticity, inclusion becomes a natural result of our desire to create alignment and shared learning around principles that matter to us.

Purpose
A reason for seeking the meaning and the rewards, coupled with an overwhelming sense that you really do have a purpose, perhaps one that feel a lot larger than yourself.

For millennials, work therefore becomes both a tool for defining purpose and an expression of living out that purpose. And this means success encompasses much more than the bottom line. The millennial generation recognizes various milestones as success, all of which in turn help us fulfill our sense of purpose. These successes range from the emotional and intangible to the practical and quantifiable. They can include how happy you feel at the end of the day, the number of countries you visit before you’re 30, the number of languages you learn, how engaged your blog audience is, how much money you’re able to donate each year, how much dedicated time you have in a week to share learning with colleagues, how many conferences you attend each year, etc.

Previous generations would likely view many of these as personal pursuits that fall outside the company domain. But because the millennial generation perceives the world as very flat and modular, we struggle to create the black-and-white “personal” and “professional” boxes. We tend to think such separation is artificial and often prevents our interests and success in one domain from enhancing the interests and success in the other domain. And if this goes on long enough, we might start to wonder if we’re really meeting our purpose, if our job satisfies our passions, etc.

Pace
A personal and professional rhythm that keeps it all in check and on track. The awareness that we are living longer and work needs to be sustained for the long haul. It’s about more than time management—this encompasses relationship management, passion and professional development, personal satisfaction, etc.

I envision the millennial generation replacing the concept of balance with the concept of pace. Balance comes from a linear world that says if life is out of alignment, you should just remove a few activities or add a few people at a certain step to shift capacity. Because millennials see the world as a non-stop, organic feast—with lots of moving parts that can be creatively connected—the effort needs to be more about finding the right pace to accommodate it all rather than striking a good balance in which everything has a place in line.

If you’re a millennial, what do the principles of Passion, Purpose and Pace mean to you? Do you find they actively inform how you view opportunities, relationships, mentoring, happiness, etc.?

And in a tangible way, what do these principles mean to organizations and colleagues from other generations? In my next post, I’ll share some of the tactical disconnects that may highlight how millennial principles of Passion-Purpose-Pace are changing relationships and ways of working. I’ll also include ideas on how to anticipate and address such disconnects.

If you have a blog that covers these kinds of topics, please share your thoughts and your site in the comments so we can start connecting pieces of the conversation.

I officially start working for the family business on Wednesday, and I am anxious to get started. I always tell my peers to take a week off between jobs, but when it comes to my own transitions, I rarely leave time to breathe.

This time I have four days between one job and the next. I’ve tried to be intentional about how I spend those days. It seems like the time before a new job should be fertile ground for good thinking–but I can’t seem to think about anything but practical matters. Grocery shopping. Doing the laundry. Taking down Christmas decorations I’ve forgotten about for too long.

There are five productive/meaningful ways I know I’ll be spending my time before starting with the new company:

1. Updating all social networks and contacts. This seems like a no-brainer, but as I started to work on it today, I realized that updating social networks is almost as tedious and time-intensive as when I changed my last name.
2. Splurging on a new piece of office/career equipment.
   If I am going to be toting my laptop around more than ever (no desktop for me at the office), I don’t want some curmudgeony old case. So I bought the lovely red case in this photo, “designed for the tech savvy woman”… for a nicer price than what Sumdex advertises, too. And, no, I won’t be dressing like this woman just to match the stylishness of my new case. But I hope to look just as happy with my purchase. (Or maybe this woman is reveling in the notion of the term “nerd” being replaced with something as polite and sophisticated as “tech savvy woman”…)
3. Getting a massage. A wonderful Christmas gift from Mike, the hubby, that I haven’t had time to use until now.
4. Starting this blog. I don’t think every new job deserves a new blog, but I think more young people should start blogging as a way of charting their own professional development. The world is increasingly autonomous but highly connected… it seems like a blog is a very independent way of connecting learning, people, ideas, and questions. The perfect platform from which to start a new career, new opportunity, etc.
5. Refining Google News Alerts settings/keywords. I don’t know why more people don’t rely on these to have the web do their homework for them. Not that New Alerts alone will suffice for research, but it’s a great start. Every new job, career shift, and personal exploration is probably worthy of a few new alerts.

Except for the massage, I’m a bit disappointed at how tactical these are. Some people probably spend their time being very introspective before launching into a new position. Any ideas on what kinds of questions to ask and ways to prepare when heading into a new opportunity, especially as a young professional?