Changing jobs in a changing world
02/02/19 04:10
Last night over dinner we were talking with friends about our children, the jobs they do, the lives they lead and the adventures they’ve undertaken. We had the good fortune of watching each other’s children grow from teens to adults and are genuine fascinated by their lives. One of their children has a wide range of interests. He has a degree in fashion design, is somewhat of an expert in denim and the weaving and wearing of that cloth, works as a consultant to high-end retail clothing stores in the area of store design, has a custom woodworking business on the side making furniture and other items and has many other interests. His mother describes him as a renaissance man, a title which is appropriate except for the fact that this isn’t the Renaissance. He is a new age person in a new age that we haven’t named. His many skills and interests mean that he will earn his living with many different job titles as the years go by, always adapting and changing to meet changing circumstances. You can’t meet this young man and listen to the things he is doing without thinking that he has a lot on the ball and is the like of person who is bringing forth new futures.
Our conversation led to the rapid pace of change in our world. It seems that few people the age of our children will live their entire lives in a single vocation. Many more will have multiple major vocational shifts as they journey through life. Some will have jobs that don’t yet exist and others will pioneer new ways for traditional careers to remain relevant.
My vocation is set and I know that whatever place or institution, my role will be that of minister of some kind or another. But that vocation is radically different than it was when I began. The church is undergoing huge changes. It is difficult to see what will emerge, but it certainly seems like we are experiencing a monumental change, at least as significant as was the Reformation. I have always known that preaching, teaching and pastoral care were foundational skills for my work, but that there is much more required of a successful pastor. I think that had I known when I began my career how much time I spend administering a computer network or making advertising decisions and negotiating contracts, I might have wondered whether or not I was on the right path. Those tasks and the required skills were accumulated in the process of maintaining the institution within which I preach, teach and provide care.
There are some jobs - or at least some job titles - that are relatively new which intrigue me. I think I might enjoy being a chief storyteller. Maybe other corporations have done it before, but the first I knew of the job was back in the 1990s when Nike employed a chief storytelling officer among their upper management. A quick search on LinkedIn reveals almost 10,000 hits for the job of storyteller, so there are many more corporations who have picked up the idea. Probably the most famous of those whose job is storytelling is Microsoft’s Chief Storyteller. Steve Clayton. He started off with Microsoft as a technical salesperson. Then he started a blog on the side about the adventures of working for the giant corporation. Eventually the corporate executives noticed that blog and brought him on full time as a storyteller for their corporation. He has presented TED talks, written and told stories of the corporation’s successes and is especially good at finding stories of how technology impacts the lives of obscure people in obscure locations. Microsoft has based entire advertising campaigns on some of his stories. You may remember the Microsoft ad that features people in an African village who are celebrating their connection to the Internet.
In a way, I’m the chief storyteller of our congregation. Those stories appear in my journal on a regular basis.
I’m not sure that I’m the right person to be a storyteller for a giant corporation. I’ve watched Microsoft evolve from a bible start-up with a new idea to a giant corporation that is so complex that it may be incapable of true innovation. Microsoft actually hasn’t come up with innovative ideas for a long time. They take others’ ideas and market them. They have a monopoly on a certain part of the market and are able to buy any competitors, and they have succeeded in forcing many of us to subscribe to their office suite of products which provides a steady income for the company, but by and large they have failed in the hardware business. Their phones flopped despite their buying Nokia. Their newer surface tablets are enjoying a modest success. Many industry analysts believe that the company has become too large to be able to change direction fast enough to compete in the tech sector. I’m no business analyst, but I’ve purchased my share of Microsoft products over the years, and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the company. I don’t use Word to write my blog, preferring a competitors word processing software, but Microsoft software is at the core of our church’s computers.
I am, however, fascinated with the story of the company. I know there are many different ways to tell its stories. Steve Clayton excels in telling success stories and stories of how the corporation has brought positive change. I might want to tell stories about how the company became an “evil empire” with too much power and too much information. I’m pretty sure Microsoft executives knew what they were doing when they chose their chief storyteller. After all there are some stories they would rather have told than others.
So, I’m not likely to become any company’s chief storyteller and that includes the United Church of Christ. My own beloved church would rather have someone else telling its story.
So I propose a new job, one that I haven’t seen in the current corporate world. I might have been good at this job when I was younger. I know some young people who would be excellent at it. The job is prophet.
Prophets don’t win popularity contests. They rarely get paid for their prophecies, though Moses had a good gig going in Egypt for a while. Still, I think there are a lot of institutions in our current society that could use a good prophet.
Our conversation led to the rapid pace of change in our world. It seems that few people the age of our children will live their entire lives in a single vocation. Many more will have multiple major vocational shifts as they journey through life. Some will have jobs that don’t yet exist and others will pioneer new ways for traditional careers to remain relevant.
My vocation is set and I know that whatever place or institution, my role will be that of minister of some kind or another. But that vocation is radically different than it was when I began. The church is undergoing huge changes. It is difficult to see what will emerge, but it certainly seems like we are experiencing a monumental change, at least as significant as was the Reformation. I have always known that preaching, teaching and pastoral care were foundational skills for my work, but that there is much more required of a successful pastor. I think that had I known when I began my career how much time I spend administering a computer network or making advertising decisions and negotiating contracts, I might have wondered whether or not I was on the right path. Those tasks and the required skills were accumulated in the process of maintaining the institution within which I preach, teach and provide care.
There are some jobs - or at least some job titles - that are relatively new which intrigue me. I think I might enjoy being a chief storyteller. Maybe other corporations have done it before, but the first I knew of the job was back in the 1990s when Nike employed a chief storytelling officer among their upper management. A quick search on LinkedIn reveals almost 10,000 hits for the job of storyteller, so there are many more corporations who have picked up the idea. Probably the most famous of those whose job is storytelling is Microsoft’s Chief Storyteller. Steve Clayton. He started off with Microsoft as a technical salesperson. Then he started a blog on the side about the adventures of working for the giant corporation. Eventually the corporate executives noticed that blog and brought him on full time as a storyteller for their corporation. He has presented TED talks, written and told stories of the corporation’s successes and is especially good at finding stories of how technology impacts the lives of obscure people in obscure locations. Microsoft has based entire advertising campaigns on some of his stories. You may remember the Microsoft ad that features people in an African village who are celebrating their connection to the Internet.
In a way, I’m the chief storyteller of our congregation. Those stories appear in my journal on a regular basis.
I’m not sure that I’m the right person to be a storyteller for a giant corporation. I’ve watched Microsoft evolve from a bible start-up with a new idea to a giant corporation that is so complex that it may be incapable of true innovation. Microsoft actually hasn’t come up with innovative ideas for a long time. They take others’ ideas and market them. They have a monopoly on a certain part of the market and are able to buy any competitors, and they have succeeded in forcing many of us to subscribe to their office suite of products which provides a steady income for the company, but by and large they have failed in the hardware business. Their phones flopped despite their buying Nokia. Their newer surface tablets are enjoying a modest success. Many industry analysts believe that the company has become too large to be able to change direction fast enough to compete in the tech sector. I’m no business analyst, but I’ve purchased my share of Microsoft products over the years, and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the company. I don’t use Word to write my blog, preferring a competitors word processing software, but Microsoft software is at the core of our church’s computers.
I am, however, fascinated with the story of the company. I know there are many different ways to tell its stories. Steve Clayton excels in telling success stories and stories of how the corporation has brought positive change. I might want to tell stories about how the company became an “evil empire” with too much power and too much information. I’m pretty sure Microsoft executives knew what they were doing when they chose their chief storyteller. After all there are some stories they would rather have told than others.
So, I’m not likely to become any company’s chief storyteller and that includes the United Church of Christ. My own beloved church would rather have someone else telling its story.
So I propose a new job, one that I haven’t seen in the current corporate world. I might have been good at this job when I was younger. I know some young people who would be excellent at it. The job is prophet.
Prophets don’t win popularity contests. They rarely get paid for their prophecies, though Moses had a good gig going in Egypt for a while. Still, I think there are a lot of institutions in our current society that could use a good prophet.