Get With the Program.

The Elephant and the Flea

The Elephant and the Flea
Looking Backwards to the Future

Charles Handy

Hutchinson, Random House, London 2001

For the Fifty Plus Executive looking for a story that speaks to a future outside organizational life, this is the book that will best serve as the model for rethinking that future. After all, Charles Handy first coined the phrase "portfolio career" in the early 1980's and since then we have seen a larger number of people living this life. With the increasing interest in this life model, it would seem that many more authentic stories have yet to be seen and heard.

As Handy says in the first chapter, he was looking for a way to explain "why large organizations (elephants) needed irritant individuals or groups (fleas) to introduce innovations and ideas essential to their survival". But telling his "going portfolio" story in the book, across the wide sweep of global work changes , the message is all for the fleas.

Reading this book when it first arrived, Handy painted for me in his authentic voice all the possibilities and the realistic challenges of the "independent life" in a flexible later life career. Not that you can't be 30 and have this reality, but there is a particular appeal (though underscored in career discussions up to now) for the Fifty Plus.

If Handy encourages anything through the telling of his story, it is that you need to be eclectic in your thinking - exploring more of who you are reflected in what you do, learning to "do different" and that in"chunking the work" you may find yourself cutting across the grain of your past patterns of life.

While for some, portfolio careers may not be a choice it may be a case of waking up one day finding you are doing it anyway. Little makings of Handy's "fleadom" will most likey be lived successfully when communities of fleas connect - not just on the need to network but to learn from the challenges of the pilgrimage.

I revisited this book again, three years on and realized that there is so much more confidence and vocabulary a flea needs to develop if it wants to buzz in the ears rather than living on the hide of an elephant. Should there be fleadom courses for the fifty plus?

Change Rangers Presents at Elder Connection

November 24, 2004 at 7:30am

Monthly Networking Breakfast meeting for businesses who specialize in services for seniors.

La Pentola Ristorante
2 Credit Union Drive, Toronto

Reserve by phone 416 444-7598

Can Old Worms Catch New Fish? :
Re-working Retirement & Later Life Careers

Presented by Mark Venning

A later end Boomer – the agile rock star Prince, turned 46 this year. Asked when he would retire he said, “Retire, how strange is that idea?”

Are you counting the days ‘til you retire? Retire to what? How will your plans to retire be tested by your desire or need to work on?

Come join Mark Venning for a sharp, fast look at the latest options for careers in later life, a braver move towards re-working retirement and a look at some highlights on recent global issues for workers in an aging world.

Change Rangers Presents at HAPPEN & EARN

Recent speaking engagements brought Change Rangers on the road with a new presentation on the subject "Re-working Retirement & Later Life Careers". Speaking at meetings for HAPPEN in Burlington on September 29 and this week in Toronto at EARN on October 20, Mark Venning addressed two groups of executives and business professionals in career transition.

The largely Boomer audience were encouraged to think about their later life career options with fresh ideas given that work life may be longer than expected for some, based on the need or desire to work in different ways well beyond the notion of retirement.

For over a decade, both HAPPEN (1991) and EARN (1990) have served thousands of executives and business professionals in Mississauga, Burlington and Toronto as self help networks and as a learning centre. Recent loss of funding by HRSDC has placed both these not for profit organizations in a position of repositioning their business model.

As in their early years, without the funding from the federal government, HAPPEN and EARN will once again learn to thrive on the energy, innovation and hard work of the leadership and volunteer members. Congratulations and may the force be with you!

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http://www.happen.ca

Integrated Careers for Executives 50 Plus

Integrated Careers for Executives 50 Plus:
When Traditional Outplacement No Longer Speaks

When an executive 50 plus leaves an organization these days and an outplacement program is offered; it becomes almost a route march, taking on assumptions that the model presented in the program will work as it has in the past. And these days that package can be shopped at a price off the shelf of competing products.

If that executive 50 plus is looking to decompress and take time to reframe his/her career and is ready for a new kind of questioning conversation on their own terms, the last thing they tend to respond to is the “outplacement route march”. In my years as a senior consultant in an outplacement (career transition) firm, I found myself taking new directions that the 50 Plus executive wanted to go. Even if it felt uncomfortable, they didn’t want to march to the music on the program purchased by their company.

Very bright talent! So much expertise to offer! Too energized to think about retiring early, quite unsure that more full time corporate experience is in the cards! This is likely someone who sees career longevity of anywhere up to 20 years of work, creatively integrated into their life plan or as the start of some brave new endeavour like starting a business.

“Help me find a better way.” says the executive, “Is now my time to take a leap of faith to a more integrated career? Help me sift through the options; help me understand the cycles. Help me understand how I will need to mange things in a different pattern.” These are just the beginning questions.

Moving to a more integrated career is a distance run, not a sprint. The issue is that most outplacement programs are not built for the distance run. A journey to an integrated career or “portfolio career” takes time. It also means living a new belief system, building new communities and support systems in your personal and business world and planning more frequent, purposeful career reviews.

And if the measurement on the success of a traditional outplacement program is based on a timely replacement of a job and income, then success needs to be re-defined for an integrated career plan.

The other observation I will make is that there is this attitude that an integrated or portfolio career is not the option for everyone so why get with it? While that may be true at first sight, it may be the only option down the road that works when career longevity is still the goal harboured in the soul.

Not everyone can express themselves immediately in the language of an integrated career. Even those who grasp it will still struggle with it. (Remember it’s a distance run, not a sprint.) Taking the exploration and assessment in group sessions should be a mandatory piece of the experience in any outplacement program for executives, whether they subscribe to the idea or not.

At Change Rangers, Executive Boomer© speaks to the distance runner in the quest for career longevity. It’s not an outplacement route march. It’s a creative journey for career longevity.