Catching up on podcasts the other day, I found Peter Day had one of his World of Business programmes where he interviews one person for the whole show. This time it was Charles Handy who is one of my favourite management thinkers.
Charles has seen more change in business than most. He started work at Shell back in the 1950s and has watched organisations change ever since, writing 17 books about it. One of the points he makes in the programme is that while we still organise everything (especially policy) around the idea that most people work in full-time jobs in large solid organisations, it’s no longer the reality for the majority of people, and where it is — people don’t like it much either.
I was lucky enough to spend some time with Charles when we were writing Disorganisation at Demos, ten years ago now. He had a very profound impact on me and, looking back, influenced what I do now which is to help people set up new types of organisation that fill the gap that is being left behind by the decline of ‘bureaucratic capitalism’.
His new book The Second Curve is out now. I’ll certainly have a read.
Charles Handy on the way we work
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