Author, thinker and speaker Charles Handy, who died Friday at age 92, was one of the few non-Americans to merit the description “management guru.”
It was a term he did not like and preferred the label “social philosopher.” Handy preferred counseling to consulting leaders and the method he chose was “Socratic dialogue.” It often took place over a meal at one of his houses in Putney or Norfolk, to which he and his wife Elizabeth would invite interesting thinkers, writers and businessmen.
But Handy’s many ideas about organizations, offered in public lectures and in a series of books and articles, were practical, prescient, and often provocative.
In the 1980s and 1990s, he predicted innovations now common in the world of work, such as the rise of what today would be called the “gig economy,” the expansion of outsourcing, and the growth of portfolio careers. . Well into old agehe remained a bold, no-nonsense advocate for human values in business and an outspoken critic of the dangers of rapid automation. “If the organization were purely digitalized,” he said in a speech in 2017, “it would be a very sad place, a prison for the human soul.”
Handy was born in County Kildare, in what is now the Republic of Ireland, the son of a Protestant archdeacon. He described himself as “one of the last Anglo-Irish” and was entitled to both Irish and British passports. “Our beginnings shape our ends,” he wrote in his autobiographical book. Me and other more important matters in 2006. “I may feel Irish at heart, but I still belong physically and emotionally to Britain and, indeed, to Europe.”
He read “Greats” at Oriel College, Oxford, a mix of classics, history and philosophy, adding a foundation of ancient thought to his work. A central concept, since Aristotle, was the search for eudaemoniaor satisfaction, which Handy interpreted as “doing the best at what you are best at.”
Handy joined Shell International as a marketing executive at a time when the company represented the pinnacle of postwar best management practice. It was his only experience working as a corporate employee and it fueled a deepening set of personal stories that he then shaped, distilled and used to dramatic effect in his books, lectures and broadcasts.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Handy was a pioneer of British business education, bringing the relatively novel idea of executive education from his time at MIT’s Sloan School of Management to the London Business School, where he taught a version of the program. US.
However, in 1981 he made the leap to what he would later call “portfolio life.” He left the educational routine and became self-employed. The change of direction gave him the time and freedom to write a series of books on modern organizations, including The age of unreason (1989) and The empty raincoat (The age of paradox in its American version) (1994), in which he addressed the paradoxes and challenges of economic progress and the changing workplace. The transition also involved what he later described as a rewriting of his “marriage contract” with Liz. She resumed her career as a photographer and, compensating for Handy’s initial reluctance to collect speaking fees, became his business manager, agent and image consultant.
Handy’s lucid and conversational prose was characterized by the use of vivid metaphors. Among them were the “shamrock organization,” an early description of a company’s network of staff, contractors, and part-time workers, and “the elephant and the flea,” his image of the symbiotic relationship between large multinationals and corporations. independent workers, taken from his 2001 book of the same name.
In The second curve (2015), Handy repeated some of his greatest hits, but was also full of radical proposals for change in areas as different as measuring the economy and organizing British democracy. He also wrote how he had decided, as he grew older, “to remain interesting to the generation below me, whether by wit or wisdom, seasoned occasionally with a certain judicious generosity.” He and Liz, who died in a car accident in 2018, lived up to that resolve.
Handy also remained a genial but shrewd marketer of his brand. In 2015, a fan asked him to offer his endorsement for a new book, and Handy responded by email, “I never do blurbs,” but added that he was happy to write a foreword, the kind of “judicious generosity” that also ensured for his name to appear in the book. front page.
His determination to spread his ideas continued to shine even after suffering a stroke in 2019. Impatient with the hospital’s restrictions, he persuaded nurses to place a note above his bed saying “Charles Handy can do whatever he wants to do.” , and laid plans to write about your experience.
He died peacefully at home, surrounded by family. He leaves behind two children, Scott and Kate, and four teenage grandchildren, to whom he dedicated his 2020 book. 21 Letters about life and its challenges.
He continued to do the best he could do until the end. One last book, The view from the nineties: Reflections on how to live a long and happy lifewill appear next year.
In 2017, Handy gave the closing speech at the Peter Drucker Global Forum, a lecture in honor of another reluctant management guru whose work he admired. He closed with a rallying cry for a revolution in management. “Let’s start small fires in the dark until they spread and the whole world is lit with a better vision of what we can do with our businesses,” he declared to a standing ovation.