Remembering Charles Handy

Charles Handy, the man who inspired the foundation of Tomorrow’s Company has died. Many members of the Tomorrow’s Company community will have heard him speak. I recommend ?the tribute to him in the Financial Times by Andrew Hill, and the comments that follow. Many people testify to the way he stimulated and inspired them. Here’s ?my grateful tribute to him and his legacy.

My father George died in 1997. On my wall is a framed tribute to him written for The Independent and republished in the RSA Journal by former RSA Chairman Charles Handy.

Now ?it’s my turn to write a tribute. ?

I first met Charles around 1988. By this time he had moved on from a corporate career in Shell and an academic one at London Business School to a freelance life. His humane and accessible books about management and organisations were best sellers. ?He was speaking all over the world, stimulating fresh thinking in the world of education, delivering talks on BBC Radio’s Thought for the Day, and chairing the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) where I had recently given a lecture.

?I was 35. I was in the doldrums after 15 years as a manager in manufacturing businesses uneasily combined with some political thinktank work and four years as a County Councillor. ??

A year after we met he rang me. Would I like to apply to become Programme Director at the RSA? I was struggling in a new role as Sales and Marketing Director in the printing industry. Initially I said? ‘no thanks – I’ve got to make a success of this’.

A few months later my MD told me I should look for another job and I was back on the phone to Charles. Had the RSA filled that job? They hadn’t. I was interviewed and appointed. The adventure began.?

Coincidentally my wife Conca had just completed her Open University degree and opted to attend her ?degree ceremony in Ely Cathedral. The guest of honour turned out to be ….Charles Handy. Conca often quotes his speech. He had been asked by the Open University to write teaching material. The first attempt was sent back to him. ?‘Remember’ they’d told him ‘our students have busy lives and are very discriminating. ?You’ve got to make them want to turn the page’

Later that year Charles had been invited to give a lecture at the RSA . He was thinking of using it to ask?‘What is a Company For?’?

I liked it. ?‘You give the lecture and I’ll see what we can do on the back of it.’ I replied.

So followed a series of dinner dialogues in the RSA’s Shipley Room, where the business leaders of the day responded to Charles’s question and spoke openly about their anxiety and ?dissatisfaction about short-termism, employee disengagement , ?executive pay, and the emerging environmental threat.?

It emboldened me to invite them to ?join and fund a business-led RSA inquiry on the role of business in a changing world. Out of over 70 dialogue participants we were able to recruit an Inquiry Team of 25, chaired by sir Anthony Cleaver, then chair of IBM UK.?

So within 18 months, thanks to two prompts from Charles, I had gone from disappointment and frustration in two unsatisfactory careers to leading ?a groundbreaking conversation among business leaders, investors and policymakers about the future of business – the subject on which both Charles and I had derived much inspiration from my father whose first book on the responsibilities of the company had been published in 1951. .?

As we finalised our report Inquiry Team members were challenging me to set up an organisation to take forward the agenda we had created together. With the confidence Charles had given me ?and the support of people like Dick Onians of Barings Venture Capital Partners, John Neill at Unipart and Stuart Hampson of John ?Lewis, I jumped at the chance . ?Changes to directors duties, the acceleration of interest in Purposeful Business; the investor stewardship code; the early discussions that led to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and the integrated reporting movement; the development and enrichment of the concept of the board mandate; and now the focus on 14/15 year-olds and how the next generation learns about effectiveness, enterprise and their own potential, are all fruits of the 30 years that have followed.?

Through downs and ups, triumph and disaster, the adventure has continued. We have ?found continuing richness in the process of posing leaders a difficult question and supporting them as together they grapple with it. Charles and Liz were never far away, both as friends and mentors, Charles ?keeping a grandfather’s eye on our progress, Liz warning of holes she had seen other organisations falling into. I wish I had listened earlier to Charles’ observations in his 2015 book The Second Curve.?

Liz had done her own Open University degree and with encouragement from Charles had built a highly successful photographic career. They developed a fascinating number of book collaborations until Liz died ?in a car accident in 2018. ?Charles continued to ?write with great insight about the experiences that had affected him most, including that bereavement .?

A year later he had a stroke. Still he persisted: I would visit him in Putney and he would talk about columns for The Idler that he had composed in his head before dictating them. Yet he felt to me like a sparkling mind and courageous spirit caged inside unbearable physical limitations. ?On those visits - as in this message - I have ?never missed the chance to tell him what difference he has made to my working life. He moved it from the pedestrian to the exhilarating.?

Here’s some of what Charles taught me. ?

·???????? Business is ultimately about human beings.?

·???????? Ask yourself: what’s really important in this situation?

·???????? If you want to influence someone ask an open question, don’t preach at them.

·???????? Write for the children: that way you keep it simple for the adults too.?

·???????? Tell stories; give examples. Make sure people want to turn the page.?

·???????? Don’t miss the second curve?

In his autobiography Charles wrote ‘Life, I now think, is really a search for our own identity. ..As we move through life, we climb a sort of ladder of identity, gradually proving and discovering ourselves.’

One of Charles’ many gifts to the world, and certainly to me, was the help he gave people in making that search more fruitful.

The poet TS Eliot wrote

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

In many ways business faces the same perplexing challenges today as when Charles asked his question in 1990, only with even more scale and urgency.?

Anyone out there ready to lead the next inquiry. Charles Handy would love to see that Second Curve!?

Mark Goyder is Founder of Tomorrow’s Company.