Must read books: The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy

Charles Handy is a British management consultant who spent his earlier working life as an executive for Shell International. Somewhere along the way he picked up a philosophical bent – indeed, some of his later books are mainly about the philosophical aspects of working and employment. But much of the material in The Age of Unreason is strictly practical.

Among other ideas, Handy looked forward to a world where telecommuting was an everyday reality, where the people no longer regard marriage – or any other aspect of their lives – as being for ever and where vast numbers of workers were no longer employed in organizations, but were either employed on a temporary basis or hired as professional consultants. In other words, Handy painted a pretty accurate picture of today’s employment and social landscape.

The book includes number of themes covered here in Knowledge Workers. In some cases he suggests remedies to problems or appropriate courses of action. But for the most part the book is a powerful exhortation asking the reader to think in new and radical ways about a constantly changing world.

For instance, Handy explores the contradiction that employers want to hire staff that have both knowledge and experience but that it is impossible to get experience without first getting a job. He suggests that there are professions that quickly accelerate young people through the ranks to the point where they can switch careers. Journalism is an example where young people tend to get handed huge amounts of responsibility early in their careers.

Another interesting idea is that people now have shorter careers in the past, but that they worker harder so that over the length of their working life they perform as much as earlier generations. Handy says people now spend longer in education so they start working later and employers encourage them to leave work at an earlier age. So a career in, say, international banking might last from the age of 25 to 50, just 25 years. In earlier generations the same career might have lasted almost 50 years from 18 to 68. However, Handy missed one twist on this, today’s employees work longer hours.

In fact, if you’ve read The Age of Unreason in the past, it’s worth rereading the book to triangulate events over the past ten years. By looking at what Handy got right and where he went wrong, you’ll get a better understanding of the Knowledge Worker career landscape.