Myself and Other More Important Matters

The points that Handy makes can't always be directly applied to day-to-day organizational issues or management challenges. So it's a thought-provoking book rather than a manual. People who like biographical books about leading business figures will certainly enjoy it, but it's probably of greatest interest to those who are exploring their own core values, or are thinking about shifting their life plans.

So, keep listening and find out why we should still be reading Aristotle, why universities are wasted on the young, and why one ambitious wine grower didn't want more land.

The first of the book's eighteen chapters stands outside the chronological path of the rest of the book. It muses on the theme of personal identity, and how this changes throughout someone's lifetime. This sets the scene for the later chapters, many of which describe what the author sees as different versions of his personality that have existed over time – or in different situations, such as at work or at home.

He draws in some wider themes here, such as whether leaders are born or made, and touches on a perennial moral question: How can someone justify doing something in the business arena that they would not dream of doing in their personal life? He doesn't really attempt to answer the questions he raises, but the tangents and anecdotes that he weaves round the discussion are both interesting and surprisingly fast-paced for a book of this type.

In chapter two, the autobiography starts in earnest, as the author recounts his upbringing as a Protestant living in the largely-Catholic Republic of Ireland. He describes with concern what he calls a "system of apartheid," between Protestants and Catholics. He points out how easy it is for people to grow up believing that there's only one way of seeing the world, and how important it is to learn to look beyond stereotypes. Readers could certainly extend this point to the world of work, but the book doesn't spell this out.

The third chapter is about the author's study of classics at Oxford University, which made him realize that the Greek philosophers anticipated many of our current problems. In fact, he says, the ancient Greeks may even have contributed to some of them.

For example, Plato firmly believed in hierarchies, and the idea of having a top-level elite, who are picked out early and trained for leadership. To Plato, meritocracy and democracy were inefficient. The author compares this belief to the practice of siphoning off the brightest young recruits into fast-track management streams. He notes that this was common practice around the time that he was starting work.

In this chapter, Handy introduces a philosophy that he returns to at the end of the book. It comes from Aristotle's concept of "the golden mean," but Handy helpfully refers to it as "the idea of enough" – the notion that the good life works on the middle ground between too-much and too-little. Handy concludes that our task in life is to make the most of what we start out with.

Does this sound moralistic and a little boring? Whatever you may think of the concept, its presentation certainly isn't dull, because Handy makes every effort to entertain his readers. As a professional international speaker, he has had plenty of experience in doing just that. Throughout the book, he uses modesty to make us feel that this supposed "guru" is on our level, and then mixes his modesty with humor.

Chapter four focuses on Handy's lessons in Borneo with Shell, and describes how his management career began with what he calls the immersion theory of management development. Perhaps surprisingly, he found this approach had many positive features. Later, we discover one reason why this might be: Handy outlines how an extensive formal education can be wasted if learning is not tied to experience.

The conclusion Handy reaches here seems to contradict many management manuals. In most human situations, he says, there's no textbook to guide us. Everyone is different and you have to make your own judgments most of the time. That is what Handy means by unlearning the overriding lesson of early schooling, which is that someone else knows best.

Readers looking for a strict business message may find chapters two to four rather too autobiographical, but they'll probably enjoy chapter five much more. Here, Handy moves on to the topic of management training. He gets inspired by what he calls the "gumption" of American culture and we can sense his enthusiasm.

This is classic Handy at his best: he gives us grippingly readable stories, finds just the right moments to strike deep personal chords, and then opens new doors. He wraps up with his motivational message: It's for us to create our future, and everything is possible if we care.

As Handy says of himself, he's a "wordsmith," and his writing puts many other authors in the management genre to shame.

The next six chapters continue to focus more on management messages than on Handy's life story – although a broad range of topics is covered. In these pages, the author reveals the features he thinks new entrepreneurs have in common, and writes about the growth of business studies in Britain. He discusses why he feels that management is more art than science, and he also looks at the importance of emotional intelligence.

One of these chapters explores the question of whether private morality should, on occasion, override legitimate authority. Another, based on the death of Handy's father, discusses the need for pain and trauma to spark necessary change.

This, in turn, is a stepping stone to a detailed debunking of the old-fashioned idea of a single, long, smooth career in just one occupation. Nowadays, of course, it's more common for people to have two or three very different lives.

Handy develops this idea in chapter nine, where he raises the concept of what he calls "portfolio lives," a term he's credited with inventing, and first put forward in his earlier book "The Age of Unreason." "Portfolio lives" refers to the different types of work that people undertake, from wage work, fee work, and gift work, to study work and work in the home.

Moving on, he emphasizes how stories can be used effectively in many situations, even when they're not literally true. Stories offer what Handy calls "low definition concepts." By this, he means that they help you think about what you should do in a situation by showing what happened in a similar one.

And this is how "Myself and Other More Important Matters" works too. It's one of those life-changing books that really is life changing – but not obviously so, with big thunder claps in the sky. Rather, its stories and observations sow the seeds of new possibilities. It encourages us to value things we have done, that we might previously have seen as failures. From there, it's up to the reader to decide what to harvest.

Following on from these fairly rich chapters, Handy discusses various topics he finds engaging, including the subtly different interests of business owners and remote investors, and how boarding schools fit with family responsibilities.

This moves into a discussion about how homes and businesses are used, and whether traditional layouts really support the way people live and work today. And suddenly, tucked away among these practicalities, Handy offers a gem for those interested in life planning and time management.

He describes how he and his wife have calculated the hours per year they will spend on creative work, how many they will spend on administration and business, and how many days they will take off work. This could be the most practical and path-breaking tip for those of us who want to work in a regular job, do freelance work, and lead full creative and emotional lives too.

The last major chapter in this book is called "Guru Times." Here, Handy lambasts the inaccurate and overcomplicated language that's come to be used by consultants, some managers, and business schools. He accuses these people and organizations of coining pseudo-technical terms to make what's obvious seem clever. Some of the terms he picks out are Re-engineering, Core Competences, Six Sigma, Social Network Analysis, and Format Competition. Handy even includes Globalization.

For readers who don't know – or don't remember – what these words mean, this book will come as a relief. Handy's refreshing common-sense attitude frees us from what he describes as the "false mystique" of pseudo-language which leaves the impression that we can easily solve or control the problems the words describe.

But his main point here is that organizations are not machines, and can't be sorted out by the strict application of some new approach. While things can be tightly managed, people can't be, in the same way. Handy says that is the central lesson of all his books.

While he's certainly grinding a personal ax here, his points are nevertheless challenging for anyone concerned with business management. He asks some demanding questions, such as "Why do we need big organizations, when most of us don't relish working in them?", "Why do we treat those within them in the ways we do?", "Why do we choose only one version of success, when there are many different versions that could exist?" and "Is there too much love of money for its own sake?"

Handy comes out with a bold statement here: that making the world a better place is what is missing from capitalism. Our current capitalistic thinking leads us – wrongly – to believe that more is better, he says.

And that's why he wishes more of us in more businesses would think like a wine grower he once met in Napa Valley. The man told Handy his ambition was to grow his business. "Where will you find extra land," the author asked. The wine grower replied, "Oh I don't need to grow bigger, only better."

As Handy himself says, there may be a time in life for energy, adventure, and ambition, and another – later – time for reflection of the sort found in this book. The increased capacity to learn in this later time leads Handy to believe that universities are wasted on the young – there are just too many distractions at that stage of life.

"Myself and Other More Important Matters" is a special book whose wise words need to be digested slowly, and returned to. Some readers will find themselves reaching for a pen, to jot down some of the gems contained within its pages. It's also the sort of book you might want to buy for your elders, be they parents, mentors, bosses, or former gurus – although guru, by the way, is a word Handy hates!

"Myself and Other More Important Matters" by Charles Handy is published in paperback by Arrow books.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights.