The Hungry Spirit: New Thinking for a New World by Charles Handy

Author:Charles Handy [Handy, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

WORKING WITH OTHERS

Visions of a world of telecommuters, eyes locked to their screens, marooned in their homes or their work cabins, seeing no one, meeting no one, have always been much exaggerated. If it’s too lonely, it’s ineffective. In John Naisbitt’s words, Hi-Tech will always need to be balanced by Hi-Touch. I have, myself, suggested that portfolio work is the way of the future for many of us, particularly later in life, but the self-employed will be unlikely to exceed 20% of the workforce (they are now 13% in Britain) in the foreseeable future, and even when you are categorized as self-employed, you are seldom on your own. You are working with or for someone else on their problems. If you aren’t, you are on your way to bankruptcy.

Organizations are being dismantled, but they are then being reassembled in a different way. A blend of skills and personalities is still needed to get most jobs done. Businesses today resemble the hoarding at a building site, listing the huge array of sub-contracted firms and individuals involved in the project. But that array still has to be managed, and, as organizations are finding, it may be cheaper but it is much more difficult to manage people when they aren’t your people. Ironically, the more independent and autonomous we get, the more we have to learn to work with others. Much of the time, however, we have to work with people we do not see or meet, except occasionally.

Trust is at the heart of it. That seems obvious and trite, yet most of our institutions tend to be arranged on the assumption that people cannot be trusted or relied upon, even in tiny matters. The systems are set up to prevent anyone doing the wrong thing, whether by accident or design. The courier could not find our remote cottage the other day. He called his base on his radio link and they called us, to ask directions. He was just around the corner but in the chain of communications a vital part of the directions got left out. He called them again, and they called us. Once more it happened, this time to ask whether we had a dangerous dog or not. When he and his van eventually arrived we asked whether it would not have been simpler and less aggravating to everyone if he had called us direct from the roadside telephone booth where he had been parked. ‘We can’t do that,’ he said, ‘because they won’t refund any money we spend.’

‘But it’s only pennies,’ we exclaimed.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but that only shows how little they trust us!’

Writ large, that sort of attitude means a paraphernalia of systems, checkers, and checkers checking checkers – expensive, and deadening. Some commentators have argued that what they call the ‘audit mania’ or the need for some independent inspection, is a virus which is infecting our society. It is happening, they suggest, because we no longer trust people to act on behalf of anything except their own short-term interests.

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