- "The office of the future will often be more like a traditional
city club"
"Does office space need to be built the way it is now?"Rows and
rows of cubicles (personalised by the individuals inhabiting that
space) in the centre and rooms adjacent dedicated as meeting rooms
and rooms for senior management are hardly places to spark innovation
and build teams of high energy and involvement!
Businesses invest a lot of money into office space. Yet, its usage
is only for a maximum of twelve hours and hardly over the week-ends!
With current use of technology and emphasis on work-life balance
and awareness of the importance of physical surroundings, should
not office space be redesigned for the new ways we work and interact?
Charles Handy questions whether "we have imprisoned ourselves in
the spaces of the last generation." and believes that "The office
of the future will often be more like a traditional city club".
Just like a club that is open to members and offers its facilities
such as dining, discussion, library, and other facilities to its
members.
He compares professions such as teachers, actors, professional
sports people who have a common room or share a dressing room but
no separate space for themselves.
- "In a looser flexible world of work, both space and time
are up for grabs" "There is no need for us or anyone to live
by the formula that suited the agricultural age."
We need organizations to adapt "chunking their lives in untraditional
ways" as organizations move towards the 24/7 concept of work day.
As a colleague quipped, "work from anywhere actually means work
from every-where".
"In the ideal world, the allocation of the 132 days off and 233
(if you were to include the week-ends and about 28 days of paid
leave and public holidays) days of work should be the joint choice
of employer and individual" and employees should be able to slice
up "those 132 days any way you like"
"We should not be imprisoned by the patterns of the past but design
our use of both to suit ourselves, whether we are organizations
or individuals. It brings more of life under our own control."
While organizations are trying to introduce flexi-time, sabbaticals,
time to pursue your interests, we are still at the tinkering stage
and are not yet rocking the boat too much. If a meeting needs to
be arranged, would be a 8.00 pm to 11.00 pm in a 24 hour period
be too much to ask for, if the evening or afternoon is yours to
spend with your family?
- Organizations are "living communities of individuals" and
"A business is, properly, a servant of society of which owners are
a part but not necessarily the main part."
Charles Handy believes that the essential task of leadership is
to combine the aspirations and needs of individuals with the purposes
of the larger community to which they all belong. "It is important
to treat people, even those at the lower end of organizations as
professionals, people with recognized skills and talents".
He questions terms such as Human Resources, manage, manager that
are used in organizations. He compares organizations to theatre,
which too, works with professionals. Every-one connected to the
programme is acknowledged and should theatre companies label 'actors'
as 'human resources', no-one would work for them!
The term 'manage' in day to day parlance means 'to cope' and 'manager'
is reserved for those in-charge of things, not people! Stage manager,
Lighting manager and so on. Actors are directed and once the show
in on, the cast is left alone to perform and improve if necessary.
And finally, at the end of each performance, every-one gets a direct
feedback from the audience, thus doing away with the annual performance
appraisal.
He also sees a future where organizations will need to act in the
wider interest of society and less to the demands of the share-holders.
He believes that the "idea that companies exist to make money for
their so-called owners is slowly going out of fashion. He points
to the establishment of community Interest Company (CIC) in UK as
legal entities. "This allows social enterprises to own or use public
assets-schools, old people's homes, swimming pools and the like-
but to guarantee that such properties will always remain in use
for the public benefit."
- "My messages are a reflection of my values"
Taking us through his personal life journey, sharing with us his
experiences, the choices, its consequences and what he learnt from
it makes compelling reading and a desire to reflect on our personal
values and what we want to accomplish in life.
"In life's new supermarket of abundant choices of how to live and
what to do, we either dither hesitantly or, again, go for the old
familiar ways and habits when we could be questioning, searching,
making the world work for us rather than the other way around. You
cannot however choose between all those cereal packets unless you
have some criterion, some way to sort out the good from the bad.
It is no different in the rest of life. Without some criterion,
choices just add stress."
He shares the principle of "'eudaimonia' - To do the best with
what you are best at", the need to 're-invent retirement, especially
if it can last twenty to, thirty healthy years.
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