Charles Handy has approached his own life and career with the efficient planning of a truly modern manager. Even if you are not a "portfolio" worker, with a fee-paid, multi-client career, the portfolio principles are highly important in getting the most out of your work — and life. Learn to choose the work that suits you, and to plan your life around that choice.
Making personal choices
Developments inside companies mean that you have a wider choice than ever in the way in which you can serve an organization. Handy has identified three distinct working relationships between employees and employers.
The three leaves of the shamrock
Today's organization is made up of three very different groups of people. To which group do you belong?
* Outsourced contractor
* Professional core
* Flexible labour force
Choosing how to work
The choice for managers is between two of the three — being either a salaried member of the core or a fee-earning contributor of contracted skills. Weigh up the two options carefully before making your choice.
* As a contractor, you have the flexibility, variety, and upside potential of being your own man or woman. But your earning capacity is limited by the number of hours you can work and the fees you can charge, and you have very little security.
* As a salaried member of the core, you have greater security, considerable scope, and guaranteed rewards. But your freedom of movement and decision is outside your control.
Finding what suits
If you are undecided on your best way of working, look again at the questionnaires in Masterclass 1 and answer each proposition with yourself rather than an organization in mind.
* If you agree predominantly with the Zeus attitudes, you are either a born subordinate who needs a commanding boss, or a potential entrepreneur, a leader with the personal drive that can turn a business idea into a profitable action.
* If you find you are an Apollonian, you will probably be happiest as a core professional, a salaried employee working within an organization.
* If you discover you have mainly Athenian attitudes then you will be most suited to a highly decentralized, participative organization, or to your own consultancy-type operation.
* If you find you have primarily Dionysian characteristics, then you are a natural freelance and heretic.
The ten commandments
If you believe after doing this exercise that you are in the wrong organization, think of moving. "Have skill, will travel" is the right motto to adopt. You should also consider moving if the company disobeys the ten commandments of modern management.
1 Welcome new ideas - especially from below.
2 Insist that people need approval from only one level.
3 Praise when praise is due and only criticize constructively.
4 Encourage open debate ending in consensus.
5 Treat Problems as opportunities.
6 Use trust, not supervision, as the main control.
7 Operate a 'freedom of information' policy
8 Institute change after consultation with those affected.
9 Take, announce, implement unpleasant decisions in person.
10 Share knowledge with others and share theirs.
