what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020
Showing posts with label management gurus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label management gurus. Show all posts

Sunday, November 29, 2020

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!