The Last Post (here)

My last post in the internal Shell blog space

So, the time has come to leave Shell, after 28 wonderful years. Over the last two and a half years, blogging has been another great gift that Shell has taught me, and I’m thrilled that my blog seems to have given some pleasure and useful advice. Encouraged by this, I’m going to make a serious and sustained attempt to find a blogging niche outside Shell. You can find my new blog on www.grahambobby.blogspot.com. Please look this up from time to time, as readership is the oxygen of any blog and you are my core partners. Even better, set up an RSS or twitter feed, tell your friends, and also start commenting, and perhaps this snowball can roll as fast as any of our 2006 snowballs. In my external blog I’ll keep a similar style, and try to post at least once a week. I’ll be able to comment on things outside Shell’s sphere as well as the tried and trusted areas. Shell has been good to me and I have no intention of becoming an angry outsider.
It is a privilege to be able to retire just before my fiftieth birthday. Not many of the billion or so humans born in the 1960’s will be ahead of me, at least not through their own choice. I feel good about the decision I made two years ago to pursue a different path in my fifties, though I don’t discount that doubts might set in during the months ahead without their familiar routine. That decision also opened up many other changes in my life, changes for the better but involving some pain. While this is not for everyone, I do sense that more could benefit from such a change of scene, so I’ll try to explain how it came about. Like all good crimes, it needed motive, means and opportunity.
Motive is the rarest of the three. I have loved my time at Shell, so why give it up? Basically because I’m blessed enough to have many other things I love as well and the courage to defy convention. At work, mental capacity has rarely been a blocker for me, but physical capacity has been – I do get tired and there have been times when work has consumed all my energy, and more. Between writing, coaching, studying and music, there should be enough to keep me more than busy, especially if I add in some charity work or even a bit of paid work. Yet to do all this while still working for Shell in a senior position would be bound to strain my health. Actually I’ve been very lucky in my 40’s, for most jobs I see at my level require far more physical stamina than I possess, yet I’ve found a niche where I can still add some value while having time and energy to do some other things. Now it is time to shift that balance further, while, God willing, still having healthy years ahead.
I suspect many of my age could tell a similar story, and find a strong motive to change their life, and have means and opportunity too, yet still not consider it. I believe many are driven by a larger opposite force to stay in paid work, a sort of reverse motive. What are the elements of that? That will be different for everyone, a cocktail of genuine pleasure from work, need for recognition and ego, ambition, naked greed, fear of change, fear of changing the equilibrium at home, pandering to convention, and avoidance of serious consideration. Some of these motives are excellent, but some much less so. My challenge to you, if you are lucky enough to have the positive motivation, means and opportunity, is to give this the consideration it deserves, and challenge what your true motives and goals in life are. No one will do this for you.
Means is a simpler story, and for most of us come down to financial means. If you are younger, consider some factors which have given me the means. Starting paid work at twenty two. Not having school age kids any more. And, most important, sticking with one company, so that the severance and pension are strong. It is now that the conservative choice to avoid jumping ship all those times where I was tempted reaps its reward. I have also benefited from Shell’s expatriation policy and conditions, and also from the major increase in senior salaries and bonuses that came through from the late 1990’s. Both of these I find unfair and unjustified in the context of society overall, but I am far from alone in benefiting.
The other point on means is to suggest that you have the courage to do the sums. Many people plough on with paid work under the assumption that they need the money. Well, check it out, you may have more money than you think. And I also believe it is possible, even desirable and pleasurable, to live a lot more simply than our habit.
Opportunity takes some finessing, especially as the means equation becomes altogether tougher without a severance package. I was lucky enough to find myself in an over-populated demographic at a time of retrenchment. I also found myself in an area where no one could argue my skills were indispensible, and with some leaders who were ready to talk honestly and show some courage. With all the complexities of local rules, obscure policies and practices, and fear of precedents, this is rarely simple. Nonetheless I would argue that this combination of circumstances is not as rare as all that. The courage of leaders may be the rarest aspect, but then do you have the courage yourself to put that to the test?
I do believe that more people could make such a decision, perhaps not at fifty but maybe fifty five. That way, fewer people would have to go through the agony of an unpleasant career closure, being pushed out before they are ready and with dignity compromised. Might that be you?
Of course, I might live to regret taking this route. To find that out, you had better start following my external blog! I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks for the support so far. And thank you Shell for being a great employer.