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2019年1月7日 星期一

Charles Handy英文訪談: Life is a search for what you are best at.


A Conversation with Charles Handy

The Future of Capitalism, The Changing Workplace, Leadership, and Happiness
https://www.iedp.com/articles/a-conversation-with-charles-handy/
True to billing, Benchmark’s A Conversation with Charles Handy event in London this Tuesday took on a genuinely conversational format. After each of Handy’s four wisdom-heavy provocations on: The Future of Capitalism, The Changing Workplace, Leadership, and Happiness – participants were invited to ruminate and dialogue on the themes in small groups, and then to sit up on the stage with Handy and converse with him. As Handy mused, quoting E.M Forster; “How do I know what I think, until I see what I say?”

The format prompted in-depth discussion and gave great value for those who spoke – but the real star of the show, of course, was Handy himself. Without further ado then – here he is on some of the most pressing matters of the day…

Handy on The Future of Capitalism

Handy says capitalism must be for the benefit of all; that “the only thing that holds society together is empathy and sympathy,” and that “if democracy and capitalism lose trust in each other” – we are in big trouble. Handy’s key to saving capitalism lies in humanising and demystifying the ‘glass towers’ that rule our world (Handy’s symbol of the corporate sector, so far removed now from the man on the street below – opaque and faceless despite the glass fronts).

To illustrate how we should “re-think our ‘glass towers’”, Handy quotes Hewlett Packard’s Dave Packard, who said, in an HP management training session in 1960; “I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper to find our real reason for being . . . . A group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company . . . to do something worthwhile -- they make a contribution to society.” For HP, and for Handy, business should be a living, breathing, thinking, participating member of the community.

Handy on The Changing Workplace and Workforce

Handy has written about The Elephant and The Flea – where the elephants are big corporations (‘glass towers’) and the fleas are independent professionals sometimes working for the elephants, sometimes not. Handy believes that this ‘flea workforce’ will grow to become a majority, and that “we will see more and more people taking their intellectual property out of organisations and holding onto it… Why should somebody else own that – other than you?”

“Professional fleas,” Handy points out, “are age-independent.” And that comes in useful for Handy’s ‘retirement’ strategy - guarding against the fact that, “more and more of us will be working longer, and more and more people will be poor in old age.” It’s a depressing reality for which Handy’s tonic can be neatly surmised as ‘the Portfolio Life’. A ‘portfolio person’ – as Handy undoubtedly, and rather enviously is – combines a mixture of:

• ‘Fee work’ (“getting paid is an important reminder of your usefulness”)
• ‘Gift Work’ (“There’s no better work for you, and no better deal for the recipient”)
• ‘Study Work’ (“You should always be continuing to learn”), and
• ‘Home work’ (which roughly translates as Family, Friends, Hobbies – but, for Handy, it’s more specifically concerned with… cookery. “When you’re my age you receive tremendous applause just for putting something on the table – regardless of what it tastes like!”)

One of Handy’s greatest lessons is the importance of planting ‘Golden Seeds’. For managers, parents, and teachers alike – to plant a ‘golden seed’ is “the most important gift you can give to someone.” “To plant a golden seed is to identify a talent in someone – something they’re good at – and to point that out to them. If they trust you, it can give them the confidence to go and achieve something with it. High-achievers,” Handy tells us, “were almost all given a golden seed in the first 20 years of their lives… So go forth and plant golden seeds!”

There was a wealth of wisdom imparted over the course of the day and it was an inspiration to listen to someone who has so clearly grasped and applied the meaning of the Aristotelian concept of Eudaimonia – often translated as happiness, or well-being. Handy’s own translation from the Ancient Greek is different though - and insightful; “It’s doing your best with what you are best at… or, flourishing. Importantly this is not a state but an activity. Life is a search for what you are best at.” 




商學教育只是Handy 關心的一小部份。
Charles Handy 新書:給孫兒一代: ‘The Second Curve’
FT的書評之網頁有英文訪談。
http://hcpeople.blogspot.tw/2014/07/charles-handy.html
【商學院要在走下坡前啟動第二曲線】
管理大師韓第(Charles Handy)主張:無論個人或企業,都應該在第一條曲線尚未走下坡前,為自己開創第二曲線,簡單說,就是鼓吹大膽改變的必要。
不僅未來社會必須改變,韓第認為,商學院也亟需趕快找出新的曲線,否則五到十年內,必將被淘汰。 #本期最新出刊
關於這個網站
CW.COM.TW
去年的英國大選前夕,《獨立報》找來百位名人撰文,題目是「假如我是首相……」。

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