2014 was RAD. 2015 is going to be RADICAL.

I’m Jade Shearstone. 2014 has definitely been a different kind of year for me. I jumped off the Xero rocket ship for a while to to try something new. I was recently asked to share my experiences from this year on a guest blog post as part of The 12 Blogs of Christmas. In some aspects I’ve come full circle – I’m back at Xero, back in Wellington, back in recruitment. In others, it’s all completely new and exciting – I have side projects, I’m helping a start up and I’m prototyping a new app. Here’s some of my learnings from a rad as year.

Getting out of the building

Twelve months ago I decided to scratch an itch. I left the familiar and the comfortable for the unknown. From recruitment to coding. Why? Because I had drunk the Kool-Aid.

I had spent the previous year working at Xero in both recruitment and events. It was my first foray into the world of tech and I was hooked. I was inspired daily by our development and design teams and I was frequently having conversations about things I didn’t fully understand. It was a whole new world that had previously seemed inaccessible. My brain was invigorated. I wanted to create. I wanted in.

Can a girl with no technical experience really learn to code? The short answer is YES.

What happened next?

I signed up to an intensive front-end web design bootcamp. True to it’s word, it was intense on a number of levels but I survived. This is not my story.

SPOILER ALERT: This isn’t a fairy tale (although some magic may have been involved). I didn’t become a developer and I am not going to teach you how to code, but if you want to begin your own journey into software development, here’s a good place to start.

Where this new path did lead me however was somewhere even better. I stumbled across Lifehack Labs on the Twittersphere, a five week social innovation lab blending concepts from lean startup, UX, design thinking, with team development, leadership, technology and social innovation to tackle youth wellbeing issues.

To sum that up, it was good people doing good things. The best people in fact. I am so humbled and privileged to have had the luxury to spend five weeks learning from and with such an amazing group of humans.

The lessons I didn’t expect to learn

At many points during the year my mind was blown.

I’m going to try and piece some of it back together here because this is the good stuff. This is the stuff I didn’t realise I wanted to learn when I started to peel back the covers of a website and wrote my first line of HTML. This is the stuff that I think everyone needs to learn.

1. Ask why? Rinse and repeat.

If you want the real answer, ask why. And then ask it again. And again. And again. And again. Only when you truly know what the issue is, can you then understand it and figure out how to solve it.

2. Bring your whole self.

This sounds simple, but the reality is people hardly ever turn up to work as themselves. You always leave something at the door. But imagine if you didn’t. We’re all human, we all have good days and bad. What if you were a person first and a job description second? What if you shared how you really felt? Working relationships would be so much richer because of this.

3. Leadership is not a job title.

It is easy to be a manager without being a leader. Leadership is displayed in actions. You don’t have to wait around 10 years to get your golden ticket to step up and lead. You can do this from day one. Every action counts and it starts with you. Lead by example wasn’t just coined for fun.

4. Design thinking is not just for designers.

Taking a design thinking approach to any issue reinforces the need to get out from behind your desk and seek to (re)define the problem and answers from the people involved, test your assumptions and then to do it all again. Nothing is ever perfect, or ever finished. Get out the building (literally, whenever possible).

5. Be well.

Wellbeing has been a central theme to much of my life this year. I’m not talking about the next fad diet or fitness craze. Nor is it just about being happy all the time. “It’s about learning how to cultivate your talents, to build deep, lasting relationships with others, to feel pleasure, and to contribute meaningfully to the world. It’s learning how to flourish.” – Martin Seligman

6. Good people are doing good things.

When you start looking, it’s everywhere. Good people doing good things. On small scales and big ones. It’s not always easy to know if you’re doing the right thing but doing something is better than the alternative. Keep doing. Keep learning.

Bonus Discovery: Fluro post-it notes make every idea better.

Get it out of your brain and onto paper. Then cover the walls with it. Order it. Improve it. Validate it. Make sense of it. Iterate. And I’m NOT just talking about developers and designers. We should ALL do this. You can never have enough post-it notes.

There’s always more learnings than you can capture in words, but armed with some of these I’m looking forward to the next challenge of putting them into practice next year as the journey continues.

It’s time to flourish. I’ll leave you with this thought.

“Imagine an organisation full of people who come to work enthusiastically, knowing that they will grow and flourish, and intent on fulfilling the visions and goals of the larger organisation. There’s ease, grace, and effortless about the way they get things done. People take pleasure and pride in every aspect of the enterprise… That’s a lot of energy walking in each day, accomplishing an ever-increasing amount of work and having fun along the way.” – Peter Senge

2014 was RAD. 2015 is going to be RADICAL.