 For a few
months now I have been espousing a concept called "New
Collaborative Enterprises", as the basis for a radical,
post-capitalist society. The idea is to create a new economy based on
small self-selecting partnerships of people with unique and
complementary skills, who would work for their mutual benefit as
absolute peers. Now I discover that one of the very first 'management
gurus', Charles Handy, has been calling for something like this for
fifteen years.
Strategy+Business magazine has just published a comprehensive
bio of Handy (requires free registration to view -- well worth the
effort) written by Lawrence Fisher, a technology writer for the New
York Times. Handy calls for the creation of "villages of like-minded
individuals, bound by a common purpose and managed by reciprocal trust."
For many years, Handy, who had spent most of his life in business
management (with Shell) in the UK, and teaching it at the London
Business School, delivered his thoughts on BBC's three-minute morning
show Thought for the Day. These thoughts were published in 1992 as Waiting for the Mountain to Move and Other
Reflections
on Life.
By that time Handy had rebelled against the increasing pervasiveness of
the cult of efficiency in business, and began to espouse a new
humanistic vision of business in The
Age of Unreason (1989) — its title taken from a George Bernard
Shaw
observation that all progress depends on unreasonable people, for they
are the ones who try to change the world, while reasonable people
simply adapt to it.
The sequel, The Age of Paradox
(1994), according to Fisher, "has a more wary tone. Chapter One is
titled 'We Are Not Where We Hoped to Be,' and subtitled 'It Doesn’t
Make Sense.' In essence, this book concedes that socioeconomic change
has proceeded at an even faster and more deranging pace than the author
had anticipated, creating a world full of paradox. Technology has
increased wealth and consumption among a few while reducing employment
and incomes for many. Opportunities for personal fulfillment are
complicated by demands for ever-greater efficiency, and the new freedom
to pursue more flexible lifestyles that account for our personal and
professional lives only increases the inequities between the skilled or
talented haves and the less fortunate have-nots. Mr. Handy returns in
The Age of Paradox to the
notion of the village, here called the Existential
Enterprise, which he
suggests should better serve a host of constituencies — employees,
neighbors, customers — as well as shareholders."
Handy explores these concepts further in The
Hungry Spirit: Beyond
Capitalism -- A Quest for Purpose in the
Modern World (1997). Critics, says Fisher, "were not kind to the
book, with some suggesting
that it was disingenuous for a person of Handy’s affluence to say
that money is a means, not an end, and others accusing him of being
anticapitalist. Handy says he felt stung and misunderstood."
In his recent works, Handy has called for employees to shake off their
shackles and use their skills to their own advantage, rather than for
the advantage of increasingly indifferent employers. "Figure out what
you like to do and who will pay for it, and be a vendor
to the elephants, rather than their employee", he says in The Elephant and the Flea: Looking
Backwards to the Future (2001). “It is a much more satisfying,
adult-to-adult, relationship, versus being an employee, which is always
child-to-never-satisfied-parent.” Handy says the existing hierarchical,
paternalistic business model makes most employees feel that could not
negotiate such a relationship, and hence feel dependent (like children)
on corporations to employ them. He says those people underestimate
their value and their worth in today's economy, as a result of their
own diminished self-worth. They need to look more closely at their own
abilities, he says, and need more training in entrepreneurship.
In a conversation with Fisher, Handy said "The whole notion of
shareholders as owners of
the company is an outdated fiction. Most shareholders never put any
money into the company; they simply trade shares with other
traders. They deserve a return on investment, but not a say in how the
company is managed or the power to sell it to would-be acquirers. That
power should reside with the founders and the staff members: the
community." I almost did cartwheels when I read this. This is precisely
what I was saying in my prescription
for New Collaborative Enterprises. To hear such a venerated business
expert say this is wonderful news.
Handy told Fisher he knows this model may be a long time coming, but
he says he is just as certain that the current model is no longer
sustainable. “My solutions are far too radical for the short term,” he
says. “The idea that the ownership models of companies have got to be
abandoned in favor of community models sounds mad. But I sincerely
believe that it will come to that within 20 years."
I think that's a perfect time horizon -- one generation to render the
old order obsolete by building a new and better one in its midst. I'll
be rushing out tomorrow to buy as many of Handy's books as I can find,
but I fully expect my next career, starting in 5-10 years, will be
helping as many people as possible to realize Handy's vision -- and
mine -- to create a new economy based on small mutually-caring
enterprises instead of huge mindless and uncaring corporations, on
self-sufficient 'villages' of people making a living together producing
something valuable, useful, meaningful, of high-quality and customized
to the individual user's needs, instead of rapacious, polluting
enterprises trying to maximize profit and minimize what they give back.
Stay tuned to the 'business' category of How to Save the World. I'll be
blogging more on Handy's prescription as I read, and might even produce
a 'handbook' on how to be a New Collaborative / Existential Enterprise
pioneer. Important ideas coming together.
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