Newsletter: October 2004
This month's offerings:
Re-vision is Launched
The long awaited launch has arrived...
Re-vision's latest research assignment
can 'ageing' teachers and principals be encouraged to
not retire? should they be?
Our inadvertent 'communication
strategy'
Ann Zubrick's mid-air mechanism for refreshing thinking
about retirement
Re-vision workshops conducted at Western
Power
A financial portfolio is one thing, but two other
'portfolios' may be more important…
Re-vision is Launched
Re-vision has had a long gestation period: more like the spawning of an elephant than a butterfly!
We started thinking about the changing nature of retirement eighteen months ago. But it was only one amongst the numerous interesting topics that crop up in our regular Monday meetings. Then we discovered we were buying books, scanning the web, talking about retirement with everyone we ran into.
The more we talked, the more convinced we were of the magnitude of the changes being set in train by the increase in our lifespans. Then we began seriously to consider what role we might play in this unfolding drama.
We started running workshops - initially experimentally - with people who were thinking about what they would 'do next' after the so-called time for retirement. The workshops were enormously enriching, both for us and the participants. And they sealed our determination to work in this area.
Our next step was extremely sensible, but a strange new one for us. We hired an agency to help us understand whether there was a market for the services we were 'determined' to provide. Jack in the box in Busselton turned out to be the perfect choice. The twists and turns they led us through is a story in itself, but best left for another time.
For now it is enough to proudly proclaim that with their help and others' our ideas firmed up, were tested and...
...here we are!
The Re-vision website launched! And delivering a range of workshops, working on a few research projects, writing, speaking in a number of forums, and daily developing links with the many others who are intent on ensuring that seniors, Baby Boomers, midlife sea-changers - whatever the label - use their mature years wisely and well.
Re-vision's latest research assignment
The Education Leadership Centre in Western Australia has been concerned for some time about the ageing of the school workforce. The potential retirement of a large cohort of educators is an issue which will need to be handled in new and imaginative ways. It poses a challenge both for school leadership teams and individuals:
Older teachers, and older school leaders, will have to ask questions whose answers once seemed assured.
When should I retire? Why should I? Are there different ways of staying engaged? Who do I talk to about this?
The leadership team, in its turn, has to consider the overall stock of skill and talent in the school. It has to find ways of encouraging the continued engagement of skilled educators who are in their 50s, 60s and beyond. It also needs to create a culture where the many issues surrounding retirement and not-retirement can be discussed honestly at both personal and school-wide levels.
It is unreasonable to expect that schools, principals or individual teachers will automatically know how to respond to these new circumstances.
That is where Re-vision comes in. We have been asked to talk to older teachers and school leadership teams to find out how people are viewing the 'retirement issue'. We will be holding focus groups in schools - we prefer to call them extended conversations because that is how they are conducted. We will ask the groups to consider possibilities for retaining valued older educators, approaches that have been (or might be) used to refresh older educators and how schools might accommodate a range of different work arrangements.
The study runs from September through November. If you have any questions or want more information about this study, older school educators: continuing the commitment? contact us or Barbara Watterston at the Leadership Centre
Our inadvertent 'communication strategy'
On a flight from Perth to Brisbane a few weeks ago, I (Ann Zubrick) had the opportunity to reconnect with a colleague whom I had not seen for many years. Our seats were several rows apart so I stood in the aisle to chat with her. Inevitably the conversation turned to the purpose of our travel and what we were doing now. I described how I had left my previous work; our forming Re-vision and why and how, as a group, we embarked upon offering this suite of services to individuals and organisations.
My friend described how unready she felt to 'retire' from her professional work. Yet many of her contemporaries had done so and now placed her under pressure to follow suit. She expressed considerable relief to learn that she was not alone in finding the prospect of 'retirement' unappealing (she is just 60), and that there were indeed many advantages in continuing what she enjoyed and found engaging, for at least some time to come. After that, there would be time to explore other directions and interests.
At the end of this rather lengthy conversation I handed her the beautiful Re-vision butterfly card (pictured above) with our contact details and one of my favourite quotations on the reverse side. "Discovery rests not in finding new lands, but seeing with new eyes".
As I did, one of the passengers near-by, who had no choice but to overhear the conversation, asked if she could have one of the cards, too. As I gave it to her, three more passengers asked for cards! Which I was pleased to provide.
I believe it was Teddy Roosevelt who said, "speak softly but carry a big stick". Maybe the lesson for us is to 'speak loudly but carry butterfly cards'.
And who knows, we might just hear from these strangers. Or, almost as good, they might carry on conversations about re-visioning the possibilities about retirement with their friends and acquaintances.
Re-vision workshops conducted at Western Power
Western Power has been offering pre-retirement workshops to its employees for many years. The two days are mostly given over to a series of lectures about financial planning and superannuation.
Re-vision's role in the August workshop was to remind people that, besides money, two other 'resources' shape retirement. One is a person's network of social relationships - friends, relatives, partner, neighbours, former work colleagues, etc.. The other is time - the several thousand hours each year that were formerly tied up in work.
We gave two sessions on this theme and provided exercises to get across the point that investing time and relationships can be thought of just the way one thinks of investing money, through a financial portfolio. A portfolio of relationships needs to be diversified; so does one's time allocation. And both portfolios require on-going attention.
The Western Power group was interesting to work with. When we started, few had thought about retirement being a phase that might stretch ahead for 20 or 30 or more years. Most of participants had been imagining the simple pleasures in stopping working and doing something relaxing. They picked up our ideas quickly and, in return, had many of their own insights to share.
We certainly began to appreciate how much a good long holiday and regular caravanning offers as a means of stocking both the time and friendship portfolios. We also appreciated the fact that Western Power strongly encourages its employees to bring their partners to the workshops, and most do. It enlivened the proceedings.
It was a pleasure meeting the Western Power group and a privilege, as always, to share in re-visioning the retirement journey.
