Handy Advice For Managers

Lessons from the Influential Business Thinker

 “In everyday language it is things that are managed, not people. It is sensible to speak of managing the audio-visual equipment, but not to lump the technicians in with it… People do not like being seen as things, nor as problems to be coped with or got around to.”

 “Organizations are not machines…They are living communities of individuals. To describe them we need to use the language of communities and the language of individuals. That means a mix of the words we use in politics and in ordinary everyday life. The essential task of leadership (a word from political theory, unlike the word ‘manager’) is to combine the aspirations and needs of the individuals with the purposes of the larger community to which they all belong. You do not need to be a genius to see that the task is much easier if the leader knows what the purpose of the community should be and can convince everyone of its importance.”

 “My belief is that people have a fundamental understanding of what makes organizations work. They just need to be reminded of it and encouraged to apply their understanding to their own work.”

 “People know instinctively that there has to be trust if any organization is going to work; trust between those in the group, that they will do their best and won’t undermine you, as well as trust in their leaders…They also know that it is hard to rely on people you don’t know, or whom you contact only electronically. Elaborate research studies are not needed to demonstrate such a basic truth."

 “Too much time is spent in organizations making sure that what should have happened is happening. If people know what they have to do and are competent to do it, they should be left alone to get on with it.”

 “Management will always be largely a matter of acquired common sense and each individual will have to discover what approach will work best for him or her.”

 “We do not need to reinvent a theory of organizations. As more and more organizations are dependent on the skills of their people, they are having to treat those people, even those at the lower ends of the organization, as professionals…We should therefore look at the way we have traditionally run professional organizations to see what messages we can learn from these centuries-old institutions. Go to the theatre, I say to my readers and listeners… Theatre companies don’t talk of their actors as human resources—none of them would work for them if they did.”

Adapted from MYSELF AND OTHER MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS by Charles Handy (AMACOM 2008).