Charles Handy 1932-2024 - A True Inspiration

It is with Deep sadness that I read today about the death of Charles Handy, a hero of mine and a massive inspiration to me. Andrew Hill published an excellent obituary in the Financial Times which brought back so many memories.

One memory that will never leave me was being invited to one of the dinners Andrew Hill mentions, at the Putney house, at the top of Putney Hill just yards from where I attended college. Both Charles and Elizabeth were great hosts, and both were very genuine and forthright characters, each in their own and quite different ways. Sadly Elizabeth died in an accident a few years ago. I am sure Charles was devastated.

So, this is my tribute to both of them, and also an article I hope you will reflect on this Sunday. I will focus on the topic I hope you will reflect on. Andrew Hill says what needs to be said about Charles, and in a better way than I could - the obituary.

The topic I want to focus on, and ask you to reflect on, is the one most dear to Charles. As Andrew notes, “Well into old age, he remained a bold, common sense advocate of human values in companies and a forthright critic of the dangers of breakneck automation. “If the organisation were purely digitised,” he said in a speech in 2017, “it would be a very dreary place, a prison for the human soul.””

To this I would add, the organisation is a dreary place and a prison for the human soul for far too many, and has been for a very long time. Digitisation merely amplifies the problem. It is a problem that Adam Smith warned us would be a likely consequence of the division of labour, which put man in service of the machine, instead of the machine in service of man.

Charles told other stories to convey his horror at seeing the dehumanising workplace. One of those stories was very personal. Having worked remotely for Shell in a small and distant country in his early career, he returned to London having been asked to work in the head office. On day one, arriving at his office, he noted that the name plate on his office door was removable, which told him how disposable he was. So he chose to quit. He didn’t want to work for a company that treated its people as “human resources.”

Andrew Hill closes his obituary by reminding us that in 2017 Charles “gave the closing speech at the Global Peter Drucker Forum, a conference in honour of another reluctant management guru whose work he admired. He closed with a rallying cry for a management revolution. “Let us start small fires in the darkness until they spread and the whole world is alight with a better vision of what we could do with our businesses.”

That year I had the privilege to be in Vienna for the forum, thanks to sponsorship from Harvard Business Review. I heard the speech Charles gave at the end. And I recall the standing ovation he earned. I also wrote about it in an article back then.

In 2017, I was running the Strategic Management Forum, but when the pandemic hit in 2020 I had to radically rethink my plans. It was then I realised that, though important, strategic management just part of the much bigger problem, and that we needed a better vision for what we could do with our businesses – and all other organisations, in all sectors, in which enterprise takes place.

So far, the Enlightened Enterprise Academy, which was a result of my reflections, has started a few small fires in the darkness.” But the “New Enlightenment” I believe we need will take more than a few small fires. My hope is that we can establish an Enlightened Enterprise movement by starting thousands of small fires, and that is my ambition.

In 2025, I will start running events relates to the book I am working on, “The Better Way: Enlightened Enterprise” which I will dedicate to my heroes like Charles Handy, Arie de Geus, Mary Parker Follett and Peter Drucker - and some of those still with us who I will name later. All put people first, front, and centre in their thinking.

Sadly, Charles did not live to see the day that the directors and managers became conscious of their stupidity, of treating people the way most still do; as “human resources.” I regard that as the most deplorable, dehumanising, and disrespectful terms in the language of management theory and practice. It is an abhorrent term that should have gone long ago. It would be a fitting tribute to Charles to see it irradicated from the management lexicon.

You might think the death of Charles is not the time I should be making such bold statements, but I am certain Charles would have no problem with me doing so. He was always clear and forceful in expressing his views, speaking with honesty and integrity. He believed in saying what needed to be said, and in stating his case. I will, forever, be inspired by him.