About Charles Handy

Charles Handy was born in 1932 and brought up in the rural part of County Kildare, Ireland. Since his father was an Anglican minister, his childhood home was a vicarage. He pursued a classical education at Oxford University, studying the philosophy and history of Ancient Greece and Rome. After graduation, he joined Royal Dutch Shell and learned the job of an oil economist on the front lines in Singapore, Malaya, and Borneo. During his overseas adventure, he met Elizabeth, the Shell manager and gifted photographer who would become his wife. Through a fortuitous twist of fate, he was reassigned to the management training center at Shell Lodge in the suburbs of London. His task was to supervise the middle-management courses, a required rite of passage for aspiring executives. It would mark the genesis of his ongoing commitment to inspiring managers.

In 1996, Handy left Shell for America and an MBA at the Sloan School of Management. Upon returning home, he helped to build one of Britain’s first two graduate schools for managers, the London Business School, and became one of its first tenured professors. He left to serve as warden of St. George’s House, a small ethical study and conference center set inside Windsor Castle. While there, he launched a series of lectures on the future of work, which would pave the way for his future as a management visionary and social philosopher.

Since 1981, Handy has made an independent living and gained an international reputation as a broadcaster, speaker, and writer. To loyal BBC radio listeners, he will always be known as the voice of “Thought for the Day.” Among business trend watchers, he is recognized for foreseeing the advent of the downsizing, outsourcing “Shamrock Organization,” with its three leaves of core employees, subcontractors, and outside specialists, and the rise of the “Portfolio Worker,” whose income depends on a packet of different jobs and clients. His bestselling books include The Age of Unreason, Gods of Management, Waiting for the Mountain to Move, The Empty Raincoat, and The Elephant and the Flea, as well as The New Alchemists, co-authored with his agent and life partner, Elizabeth. In his latest memoir, MYSELF AND OTHER MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS (AMACOM 2008), Handy draws on the lessons of his own experience for insights into the purpose work, the ethics of business, and life’s big questions.

A regular on the prestigious Thinkers 50 list, Charles Handy is a recipient of several honorary doctorates and the Lifetime Achievement in Workplace Learning and Performance Award from the American Society for Training & Development. He is the father of one daughter, Kate, an auditor, and one son, Scott, an actor. He lives in Norfolk and London with Elizabeth, and keeps busy reinventing retirement. "When we cease exploring, we might as well die," Handy contends, "and I'm not ready for that yet."