Background

Charles Handy was born on July 25, 1932, in Kildare, Ireland. He is a son of Brian Leslie, an archdeacon, and Joan Kathleen Handy, maiden name Herbert. His great-grandfather was the archdeacon of Dublin at the end of the 19th century.

Education

Charles Handy attended Bromsgrove School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1956 and a Master of Arts in 1966 from Oriel College. He earned a Master of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967. Handy was awarded honorary Doctor of Letters degrees by Bristol Polytechnic, 1988; Open University, 1989; University of East Anglia; 1993, Queen's University Belfast, 1998; Middlesex University, 1998; Exeter University, 1999; and Essex, Hull, and Durham Universities, 2000. In July 2006, he was conferred with an honorary Doctor of Laws by Trinity College, Dublin.

Career

Charles Handy started his own career in marketing for Shell International Petroleum Co., where he worked from 1956-1965, but went on to become a management and organizational behavior expert. In 1965-1966, he worked at Charter Consolidated Ltd. Then entered the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an international faculty fellow from 1967 to 1968. Here Handy met Warren Bennis, Chris Argyris, Ed Schein, and Mason Haire, and became interested in organizations and how they work. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1967 to manage the Sloan Programme at London Business School, where he was a professor in 1968-1994, and a fellow in 1994. In 1977-1981, Handy worked as a warden at St George's House in Windsor Castle which was concerned with ethics and values in society. Charles Handy worked in various positions such as a consultant, lecturer, and executive trainer. He is also known to many in the United Kingdom for his "Thoughts for Today' on the BBC Radio Today program. He considers himself as a social philosopher but is recognized by others as a management guru.

In his 1976 book, Understanding Organizations, Handy teaches managers to apply what they know to be true about human behavior to organizational structures. He looks at motivation, theories about leadership, power, and politics. Handy continued to write about organizations with Gods of Management: The Changing Work of Organizations, Understanding Schools as Organizations, and Understanding Voluntary Organizations. The last two apply Handy's business theories to the classroom and volunteer groups, promoting the teacher or leader as manager. He also touts the theory that neither institution can run on good intentions alone, but must be managed and organized. Gods of Management takes a slightly humorous look at the roles people play within institutions. Handy assigns each role the name of a Greek god, based on similar characteristics. According to Joan Warner in Business Week, the author asserts that managers invite trouble "when they try to impose the culture of one god in an organization built to worship another."

Handy attempts to predict the future in The Future of Work, where he argues that without significant change, unemployment, or lack of full-time employment will continue to rise as the level of technology increases. He proposes a radical shift in the way people think about and value work, encouraging readers to entertain the ideas of less time spent at the office and placing more importance on domestic and voluntary work. These ideas were fairly revolutionary when the book was published in 1984.

Moving to a more personal style in his collection of essays, Beyond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organizations, Handy stays with the same themes, but puts an individual spin on them. The author asks the question, What is the purpose of companies? He answers his own question in his essays, asserting that companies must learn to operate as communities. However, there is also a tone of uncertainty in this book, as Handy ponders the culture of work and challenges facing the economy and education.

In 1989, Handy published a book that addresses the manner in which work has changed over the years and is still shifting. The Age of Unreason argues that the industrial workplace is well on its way to becoming obsolete, along with the traditional educational path which prepares one to spend a lifetime at a single career. Handy offers the notion of individuals possessing a portfolio of skills and life experiences, making them more generalists than experts. This would make workers much more adaptable and able to work at a variety of jobs. Handy's 1994 book, The Age of Paradox, is an expansion of these ideas. He describes nine global paradoxes that plague organizations and the employed and also further develops his portfolio theory, stating that every worker would also need an agent. Examples of the paradoxes include: the paradox of aging, wherein every generation distinguishes itself as very different from the preceding generation, however, government and educational organizations plan for the future as if the next generation will be exactly the same. The paradox of riches describes a world of extreme economic growth where people desire more and more material possessions. This means that there must also be more and more customers, yet the rich are living longer and having fewer children.

The New Alchemists is Handy's collection of biographies, which features people who have essentially built their careers from the ground up. The title refers to these individuals as alchemists because they have made something out of nothing. In the spotlight are people such as Dee Dawson, who started the United Kingdom's first anorexia treatment center. She had previously applied to the London Business School and medical school. When both turned her down, she managed to talk her way into the schools. Other biographies include those who work in business, the arts, education, and social services.

In 2001, Handy took a good, long look at his own life and career and decided to write about it. The Elephant and the Flea: Reflections of a Capitalist is mostly autobiography and part social commentary. Handy uses his own experiences in the workforce to examine how the nature of work has evolved in the late twentieth century. He also points out the advantages and disadvantages of working within an organization. To describe the workplace, Handy uses the metaphor of "elephants" for large corporations and "fleas" for independent entrepreneurs. He explains how elephants must find a way to expand while maintaining personal relationships and originality and vision, while fleas should focus on making better connections.

Charles Handy has impressed many influential people in the business world with his practical, yet humanitarian ideas and his accurate predictions. His central belief, which is the thesis driving all of his writings, is that companies are not set apart from society, and business is a fundamental part of human life. He developed the Model of Organisational Culture and defined four different kinds of culture: Power, Role, Task, and Person. He is the developer of five theories that have entered the business and career lexicon: portfolio working, shamrock organization, gods of management, "careers for life" are a thing of the past, proper selfishness.

Achievements

• Charles Handy regularly features among the top names in Thinkers Fifty, the list of international management thinkers, and in 2011 was awarded their first Lifetime Achievement Award. His books on the changing shape of work and its effects on people's lives and organizations have sold two million copies around the world. He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000 as well as an award from the President of Ireland in recognition of his work. He has also been granted honorary doctorates or fellowships from British and Irish universities. In 1999, he was an honorary fellow at the Institute of Education, London, and St. Mary's University, Twickenham.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The New Philanthropists

    (In this remarkable and inspiring book, the eminent manage...)

    2006
  • The Hungry Spirit: New Thinking for a New World

    (With his characteristically very personal anecdotal style...)

    1997
  • Beyond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organisations

    (In this challenging and exhilarating collection of pieces...)

    1995
  • The Elephant And The Flea: New Thinking For A New World

    (In addition to addressing how and why people work today, ...)

    2001
  • Twenty-One Ideas for Managers: Practical Wisdom for Managing Your Company and Yourself

    (As useful as they are incisive, these twenty-one ideas sh...)

    2000
  • The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society

    (In The Second Curve, Charles Handy builds on a life's wor...)

    2015
  • The New Alchemists

    (The world needs new ideas, new products, new kinds of ass...)

    1999
  • Thoughts For The Day

    (For five years, Charles Handy delivered a series of Thoug...)

    1998
  • Understanding Organizations

    (Organizations are a part of everyday life, whether in sch...)

    1976
  • Gods of Management: The Changing Work of Organisations

    (Gods of Management is one of the classic works of managem...)

    1978

Religion

Charles Handy was not attracted to religion, despite that he went to church together with the family. According to Handy, in his childhood life was simple, and going out to church was one of the few things to do in the village.

Views

Quotations: "The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul."

"Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child."

"A leader shapes and shares a vision, which gives point to the work of others."

"Purpose, pattern, and people, the three P’s at the heart of life."

"We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness."

"The best learning happens in real life with real problems and real people and not in classrooms."

"The future is not inevitable. We can influence it, if we know what we want it to be."

"A good team is a great place to be, exciting, stimulating, supportive, successful. A bad team is horrible, a sort of human prison."

"Citizenship is the chance to make a difference to the place where you belong."

"Creativity is born of chaos, even if it is somewhat difficult to glimpse the possibilities in the midst of the confusion."

Membership

• 

  Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce , United Kingdom

  1987 - 1989

Connections

Charles Handy married Elizabeth Ann Hill in 1962. He has two children: Scott, an actor, and Kate, an osteopath.

Father:

Brian Leslie

Mother:

Joan Kathleen Handy

late wife:

Elizabeth Handy

Elizabeth Handy was widely praised as a photographer and had works displayed at the Royal Society of Arts and Dublin Airport. She had also published a number of books, including many with her husband.

Son:

Scott Handy

Scott Handy has presented theatrical work-shops all over the world, often for the Cheek By Jowl Company - with whom he spent three years - and the Royal Shakespeare Company, of which he was a member for two years. Though best-known as a stage play he has made forays into film and has also joined the vast roll-call of those actors being investigated by Poirot and Barnaby of "Midsomer Murders" on British television. In 2013, he joined the huge ensemble cast of the BBC's epic period serial "The Village."

Daughter:

Kate Handy