I first met Dick and Jane twenty five years ago at a seminar. It was the launch of a new initiative, a two-day preview of a program designed to offer senior managers from all sectors of the economy the opportunity to step away from their focus on mission statements and objectives, resource management, competitive strategies, and all the other demanding work of running an enterprise. Instead, they would be reading extracts from writers on politics, philosophy and human behaviour, debating ethical and moral topics, and exploring issues outside the world of the organisation. While much of the time would be spent sitting around a table, examining and dissecting readings, the full program might include a visit to an art gallery, listening to an expert talking about two or three paintings, or going to a play, meeting the director beforehand, and the actors afterwards. During this two-day introduction, we were offering a sample of the approach.
Several leaders, both men and women, had been invited by one of their peers. I asked that each attendee be told those coming were encouraged to bring his or her partner with them. My reasoning was simple: if we were to have any impact on how these leaders saw the world, then the most important person in their life had to be part of that process. Although that reason wasn’t set out in the invitation, most did bring a partner, and the resulting mix around the table was ideal, balancing men and women, private sector and government, media and welfare.
Sitting around a large oval table, I introduced a discussion based on an extract from Plato’s Republic. I asked one of the corporate titans to read aloud a paragraph from the piece. He did, and, as I expected, everyone was now looking at the words more closely (I had to wonder how many had actually read the whole extract, one of three that had been sent out as ‘pre-reading’). I turned to Jane, whose husband was the CEO of one of Australia’s largest companies. “How would you answer the question, Jane.” To my surprise, she answered: “My husband always answers the questions”. I waited. After a pause, she replied, and her comments sparked off an excellent discussion. We were truly launched: Socratic style sessions were interspersed with some music and meals. Everyone enjoyed themselves, even those who had come in the belief, soon dispelled, that they would be able to out-talk and out-shine their colleagues.
I didn’t know it at the time, but some months later, a friend told me it seemed the two-day seminar might have been a turning point for Jane. She decided to do more than be a CEO’s trophy wife, an attractive and thoughtful partner. She wanted to learn about places she visited when accompanying her husband, but in doing so to explore her own interests. She went to Japan for three months to acquire some basic Japanese, to help her learn about the culture, the food and the traditions of the country. She started to live a life she felt worth living, for herself. And yes, as far as I know Jane and Dick are still married!
I would see Jane from time to time. Her daughter was an older student at the school my youngest daughter attended. Then our daughter transferred to another school, and our paths never crossed again. However, I was to meet Dick a couple of years later. I had called on a number of CEOs, trying to get them to support an initiative for what was called at the time ‘inclusive leadership’. It must seem rather dated now, but at the time I was involved in a project to introduce executives to the idea that success came from embracing diversity, and, even more challenging for some, to seeing the role of the leader as enabling others, rather than simply telling them what to do. It was hard work, and many, even most, thought it was another management fad. They had good reason to be suspicious: there were always ‘consultants’ coming to tell them what they should do next.
Dick was the next on my list. Arriving at the top floor of the building, I was unprepared for what I saw as I stepped out. It appeared just Dick, his two PAs, and a few other support staff occupied the whole vast area. From the reception desk, I was sent along a corridor, with an artfully curving design, noticing small windows inset every twenty feet or so, behind each of which was some exquisite piece of art, almost always from the “far East”. By the time I reached Dick’s office, it was as if I had transitioned into another world, another dimension. No sounds could be heard, neither from the street outside nor from within the building. I managed to stifle the obvious question (how do you keep in touch with what’s going on, not the facts on your computer, but the reality?), but instead, launched into my prepared presentation on inclusiveness and participation. He smiled, and explained, as others had before, all about his company’s objectives, focussed on growth, building wealth for the country and for the employees.
I struggled on, trying to convince him about corporate social responsibility, environmental issues, social accountability. I should add that his company was a poor performer on all those issues. Eventually, I stopped my obviously unsuccessful attempt to sell the idea. Instead, I decided to ask a question: “What kind of world are you trying to create for your daughter, and for her children?” By luck, I had found a point of real connection, and we talked for some time. His company did become more inclusive and more responsible over time. Not because of me, but external events conspired to shine a strong light on some of the less than ideal practices they had followed. And possibly, just possibly, I was one of the people who had alerted him to the importance of thinking differently to address the challenges that lay ahead.
Dick and Jane. Obviously not their real names, they were appropriated from the early childhood readers, popular in the US in the 1940s and 1950’s.[i] I was tempted to name them Peter and Jane, the lead characters in the UK series, Ladybird Books my children read in the early 1960s. I have to wonder why I chose to use those names. In part, the couple I have been describing were, in some ways, examples of the white, affluent and nice world those children’s books depicted (I wonder if they ever said, “see Spot run”, while substituting the name of their own dog?). But the books were sexist, monocultural (almost racist), and stunningly dull: try reading ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’ to see what I mean! [ii] My real-life Dick and Jane were nothing like that.
Why talk about Dick and Jane? There is another reason. It has to do with the stages of life. And that was brought home to me by being given a short book, a guide to managing the transition from work to the next stage of life, life after retirement. It reminded me of them.
There is a nice little story, a myth is the best description, about the stages of life. It goes like this. Stage 1 is childhood, the images of which flow through those Dick and Jane books. Children having fun, playing games, playing with Spot, going on adventures; above all, innocent, free and uncorrupted. The world centred around the child, with meals appearing as needed, clothes always washed and smart, everyone nice and thoughtful. Ever grumpy, no wonder I loved Richmal Crompton and her grubby and mischievous hero William, scourge of the other children at school: now there’s a child closer to the real world!
Stage 2 is about adults and work, paid work or unpaid child rearing and housework. All those dreams and aspirations to be had as a child become, as this story goes, subsumed by the need to work, to earn money. Work takes over; interests and hopes take second place; and aspirations and rewards become focussed on the job, the workplace, or on supporting the ‘breadwinner’. Finally, Stage 3 is retirement. The golden years, freed from the 9-5 routine older people enjoy their leisure, playing golf or bridge, spending time with their children’s children, travelling, looking after the garden, reading, and, yes, watching (lots of) television.
It’s all nonsense, of course, but myths serve a purpose. This myth about our lives divides time into three parts: fun at the beginning, fun at the end, and responsible and hardworking for a long time in the middle. It is a myth that suits the world of organisations, where your world becomes theirs. It is a myth that suits the organisation of our lives, where the educational system takes over stage 1, the world of work takes over stage 2, and retirement industries manage stage 3.
Aimed at senior executives, the book I was given focussed on the transition that takes place at retirement, moving on from a time when your life wasn’t really yours, but owned by work. It recommended various ‘strategies’ to adopt as you face this point: take time to think, develop a plan, look to the past to identify what you want to do, remain open and flexible, look after your health, continue to learn, take up old hobbies, try something new, be a good partner, have a written transition plan, talk to advisors. Unexceptional, but by the time I got to the end of the booklet, I could see this was an exhaustive and exhausting agenda; following it might prove to be harder than the job from which a would-be retiree was transitioning.
I lost touch with Dick and Jane, but I did know Dick never transitioned. He remained working as hard as he ever had, on the boards of several large corporations and running some other businesses of his own. Dick was defined by work, and his status at work. As for Jane, I really don’t know. It pleases my imagination to believe she continued to grow and change.
And there’s the point. Chopping up life into stages reflects the convenience of the organisations around us. People either succumb to the demands made of them, accepting ‘this is who and where I am’, or they continue to develop, explore and change.
Many years ago, my views about stages of development were shaken up when I read a book by Philippe Ariès, which proved to be a fascinating and ultimately very controversial book about childhood,[iii] especially children in the medieval era. Ariès argued that childhood was not recognized and treated as a distinct and separate phase of life then, and that there was much less separation between adults and children in medieval society. He suggested children were seen as rather more like miniature adults, and our current concept of childhood as a developmental phase was something that emerged during the 17th Century. Well, he was French, his stuff was hard to translate, and the idea wasn’t much liked. Critics piled up contrary arguments, while some supporters found data to suit his views. There remains only disagreement: we don’t know, and as a novelist wrote at the beginning of one of his books, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”. [iv]
I took Philippe Ariès suggestions a different way. I liked the idea that each individual has an ongoing, evolving trajectory, and that talk about stages of life, childhood, retirement, are mainly a consequence of culture, the ways society likes to organise us, constructs to sort us out.
The more I thought about transitions, I was reminded of the way in which a snake sheds an old skin, sloughing off the old. My friends at Wikipedia [v] tell me that snakes get rid of their old skin by rubbing against some kind of abrasive surface. The skin that is left behind is longer than their bodies (something to do with the skin covering the scales on the body). It is also the case that, quite often, when losing their old skin, snakes eyes can become milky, and they can’t see clearly.
What a marvelous analogy to use, because it is really a process of no real change at all. First of all, snakes don’t change when they shed their old skins, they are simply growing, and getting older! What they leave behind is bigger than they were: rather like people producing long and ‘full’ resumes of their work experience? Moreover, the process of getting rid of the old is brought about by discomfort, rubbing up against things. That sounds rather like experiencing discomforts at work and wanting to change, but not to something too different; a better job, with better people, but doing what you already do well, and finally, better paid! Best of all, the shedding process is one of temporary blindness, not seeing what is really going on. It sounds as though shedding our old skin is a bit like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire!
When I read that book on transitions, I had two reactions. The first was to think about my meetings with Dick and Jane, especially Dick. His life was defined by work, his position, his status in the community. Perhaps he was fortunate, but there was no ‘transition’ for him. He continued to do what he had always done. Jane might have been more of a ‘work in progress’. Then I thought about those many people for whom retirement is like confronting a cliff edge. They have to move forward, the ground underneath them is going to disappear, and they have no idea where they will land. Blind while shedding a skin.
In the end, I started to feel annoyed. Most people are the victims of the increasing ‘organisation’ of lives, moved from one part of the system to the next, school to college to work. Just occasionally, they are exposed to the reality of what is happening, and confronting retirement must be like that. I’m lucky. I’ve always been moving on to something new, avoiding capture by one organisation or another, and my life today is the happiest I have ever been, not a transition, but a culmination of the things I like do. For many others, retirement is a scary end.
I felt sad, too, thinking about wasted and unfulfilled lives. Mulling it over, my thinking took another course: I suppose it was Spot who led me to wonder if people like having a dog because a dog represents the freedom they could never have? “See Spot run”: running free. Fancy that, a dog’s life might be the best of all!
[i] A nice summary is here: < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_and_Jane>
[ii] The children’s reading book. There is a novel, and two film versions of the novel, also called ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’. By all accounts neither the book nor the two films were fun!
[iii] Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, translated by Robert Baldrick, Knopf, 1962; this was a translation of the original French text published by Plon in 1960
[iv] L P Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953, Hamish Hamilton, page 1
[v] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakeskin>
