21 Letters on Life and Its Challenges by Charles Handy

Author:Charles Handy
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781473571600
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2019-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

LETTER 11

YOU ARE NOT A HUMAN RESOURCE

Organisations can be tough places. I have even suggested that they are on occasion prisons for the human soul. A bit harsh, perhaps? But I wonder. I do remember that when I was offered a job by Shell after leaving university, I sent a telegram to my parents in Ireland saying ‘Life is Solved.’ I really thought it was, because Shell had assumed that I would spend all my working life with them; they would see to it that I got paid, did useful work and would continue to be paid after I retired. There was nothing left to worry about.

That was until I married. When they wanted to post me to Liberia in West Africa, I saw it as one more step in the ladder of promotion. My wife saw it differently. She said, ‘I did not realise that I was marrying a man who would go wherever he was told to go, would do whatever they wanted, whoever “they” were, and would judge his whole life by his rank in their organisation. Did you know you were that sort of man?’ That was the first time I realised I had made what I was later to call a pact with the devil. In exchange for the promise of financial security and guaranteed work, I had sold my time to complete strangers with my permission for them to use that time for their own purposes; those purposes being partly, or even mainly in some cases, to enrich their investors. I had thought they were giving ME something, ignoring that I had in effect given away my birthright, or my right to do what I wanted with my own life.

Of course, most organisations do not see it that way. They see it as a consensual arrangement from which both sides gain. Some lean over backwards to make their place of work more user-friendly, with fringe benefits ranging from free food, health- and childcare to meditation classes, sports facilities, community volunteer opportunities – all a well-intentioned attempt to provide a whole-of-life environment. Yet a comfortable, even luxurious prison is still a prison; you will still have given the organisation the right to use your time as they see fit. The effective use of that time is what is then called ‘management’. The problem is that managing your time inevitably involves managing you and my guess is that neither you nor anyone else likes to be managed and controlled by others, particularly if you don’t know some of them.

Think about this: any organisation whose key assets are talented or skilled people – universities, theatres, law firms, churches – don’t use the word ‘manager’ to describe the people in charge. They call them deans, senior partners, bishops, directors or team leaders. The title of manager is only used of those who are in charge of things, not people, that is the physical or inanimate parts of the organisation: the transport, the information systems, the building. Instinctively these

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