Lessons from a Life

 Charles Handy has been one of the few writers who has really touched and inspired me on my journey of the past 40 odd years.

It’s not easy to describe his appeal - since he is best known as Britain’s most eminent management guru and such people are normally publicity-seeking charlatans (see Huczyinski (1993) and Micklewait and Wooldridge)

Handy’s first book “Understanding Organisations” (1976) was written after 5 years’ experience of helping establish the country’s first business school and was indeed one of the few books on management available in Britain at the time. When the huge new Strathclyde Region set up a small group to review its departmental structure, the Chief Executive gave us a Peter Drucker paperback to give us ideas – it was the only paperback on the subject available….  “Understanding Organisations”  was written for the practising executive – management “students” didn’t exist then! There is an artificiality and technical smartness in the writing of management textbooks – but a humility and moral power in Handy’s writing. 

His next book - “Gods of Management” (1978) – was a shorter one which told the story of the 4 types of organisational culture. It was a superb read and was reflected in presentations I subsequently did in Central Asia in the early 2000s to help officials set the “one-man management” principle they were familiar with against alternative systems….

And Handy had a rare knack for anticipating the future – somehow he’s able to peer into the tea-leaves and help us make sense of the new worlds are emerging and to do so in the most crystal-clear and elegant of language. He did this first in The Future of Work (1984) when he coined the phrase “portfolio work” to describe how our careers in future would be a mixture of time-limited projects and also invented (in "The Age of Unreason” 1989) the phrase “shamrock organisations” to describe the form the organisations of the future would take – the (small number) of core workers; those on contract; and part-time workers. His books have had an increasingly chatty approach – helped probably by his experience of doing a lot of “Thought for the Day” pieces for the BBC which taught him, he says, to compress his thoughts into 450 words or so. For a very graceful assessment of Handy’s role and significance see this article

He’s reached the advanced age of 88 – and I was delighted to discover, on a recent visit to the little English bookshop in the nearby park, that he produced last year a little book 21 Letters on Life and its Challenges. It takes the format of short epistles for his grandchildren - summing up what he feels he’s learned about life.

It’s such a delightful read that, for my own benefit, I felt I needed to make a note of the main points of each of the chapters

Chapter Title	Key Points
Things Will Be Different	List of some key words whose meanings have changed dramatically in a lifetime (“chip used to be piece of wood or fried potato”) and the scale of change in that period – not least work. We are now “Creatives, Carers or Custodians”
The Human Imperative	But the really big issues and questions don’t change. “Trust but verify”
Life’s Biggest Question	Emerson’s advice – “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded” Doing the best you can with what you’re best at
God or What?	In the new diversity, can we tell right from wrong? Aristotle has twelve virtues: 1) Courage – bravery and the willingness to stand up for what you think is right; 2) Temperance – self-control and restraint; 3) Liberality – kindness, charity and generosity; 4) Magnificence – radiance, joie de vivre; 5) Pride – satisfaction in achievement; 6) Honour – respect, reverence, admiration; 7) Good Temper – equanimity, level-headedness; 8) Friendliness – conviviality and sociability;  9) Truthfulness – straightforwardness, frankness and candour; 10) Wit – sense of humour; 11) Friendship – camaraderie and companionship; 12) Justice – impartiality and fairness
Everyone Can Be Wrong	Closed and open answers; Galileo and Copernicus; Handy’s portfolio/clover idea – and the initial reaction against it
Curiosity Does not Kill the Cat	Travel with curiousity in your backpack
How Clever Are You?	Different ideas on the subject (Howard Gardiner). Schools have a strange notion “I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who” (Kipling).
Life Is a Marathon not a Horse Race	Defects of competition; Be your own master
Who You Are Matters more than What You Do	His wife photographs subjects with 5 objects to illustrate their different identities. Idea of “street wisdom”
Keep It Small	Edmund Burke’s “small platoons” Robin Dunbar’s organisations of no more than 150 and key groups of 5, 15 and 45. Federal systems best
You Are not a Human Resource	Pity Drucker used the management word – “work should be organised; things managed and people led”
You and Society	Complicated letter – suggesting we have excessive regulations; that rep democracy should be upheld
Life’s Changing Curves	We should start afresh before we are forced to
Enough Is as Good as a Feast	The Bushmen had a 15 hour week – the money poisoned everything (Rousseau) Handy separate NEEDS from WANTS (concept of free work)
It’s the Economy, Stupid	His father’s “stipend”; His wife’ separation of “investment” from “consumption” “Money and fulfilment are uneasy bedfellows”
‘We’ Beats ‘I’ all the Time	If there is a common purpose; Never take friendship for granted
When Two Become One	He confesses to selfishness in how he treated his wife
What You Can’t Count Matters More Than What You Can	“McNamara fallacy” means that mush of life gets pushed into 3rd or 4th place.. eg love, hope, kindness, courage, honesty and loyalty
The Last Quarter	future generations can look forward to last 25 years of their life being free of financial worried
You Are Unique	We have 3-5 identities
My Last Words	What he recommends for his grandchildren - Learn a foreign language, a musical instrument, a sport (individual better); write a diary and fall in love

Handy's little book inspires me to go back and look again at my draft - since the last version is from June...and is clearly too abstract and impersonal....it's subtitle "a bibliograph's notes" say it all!