AT first glance Charles Handy, economic forecaster and bestselling author of books on business management, seems a perverse choice of speaker for tomorrow's lecture sponsored by the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services. As I am ushered into the Handys' vast London flat on the edge of Wimbledon Common, currently undergoing a grand refurbishment, I wonder what on earth this beaming individual who has just returned from a summer spent with his wife of 30 years at their villa in Tuscany, can possibly know of the miseries that drive ordinary mortals to seek the help of professional counsellors.
Charles Handy, son of a Church of Ireland archdeacon, was born in Kildare 64 years ago and the rectories were his home until going to Oriel College, Oxford. From the handshake (less than thrusting) to the dining room where we have breakfast, the inheritance shows. Beneath the sleeveless pullover with its discreet Armani logo, an invisible dog collar is struggling to get out. Indeed on occasions it does, specifically on Radio 4's early morning "God Slot" Thought for the Day. But hard nosed businessman? Frankly it's as difficult to imagine this man closing a deal as boxing an eight year old's ears for scrumping apples.
His marriage is equally deceptive. A few years back while researching the effects of work stress on executive marriages, Handy inadvertently saved his own. There were, he discovered two types the traditional marriage where the roles of provider and carer were clearly separated and the "involved" variety where both partners were working where "beds never got made things never got washed up". Problems arose, says Handy because people didn't get to choose the one they ended up with. They just drifted into it, as indeed he had done.
"My Irish side wanted a traditional marriage but all my rhetoric was for the involved stuff." And he had married Elizabeth, a photographer who by no means fitted the "little woman" role.
If was very stressful. I would say to her `Why the hell can't you behave like a proper wife?' At this point in the conversation Elizabeth, clearly as much a part of the breakfast interview team as her husband, joins in. It's a well mapped battle ground he didn't have time for the children she didn't care about his work. "I said, if it wasn't for my work we wouldn't have any money in this house at all."
Familiar stuff for anyone who has been involved with counselling, whether as counsellor or counsellee. And it was through counselling that the marriage survived. In the end the Handys negotiated a contract. Each has six months of the year when his or her work takes priority. Although Charles Handy doesn't stop writing during his wife's six months' stint, he does not accept speaking engagements and does all the cooking and vice versa when it's his turn as top cat. They are partners in all senses of the word. She is his agent. ("I'm hopeless at selling myself. Liz is bloody marvellous.") He is hers. And it seems to work. An involved marriage he says is ultimately far more rewarding. "But you have to understand that there are certain costs attached to that. The house is never actually fully tidy and the children are rather undisciplined."
Understanding, says Handy, is the key. "Life is now horribly confusing. We're mixing up home and work, and work is no longer secure. So it's quite respectable and indeed necessary to get help to sort out that confusion at an early stage." The last time society changed so radically was during the Industrial Revolution when home and work were split.
It is now 20 years since Charles Handy, then a professor at the London Business School specialising in managerial psychology, first warned that the technological revolution would transform our lives. He called it "down sizing". But few people were listening.
THREE years ago he wrote The Empty Raincoat and everything changed. In language any broad sheet reader could understand, he demonstrated how people would now be paid not for their time, as employees, but for their skills. Portfolio working (Handy's near trademark term) would become the norm, with people "becoming their own employers", selling their skills to customers, rather than a single boss. He offered a few pointers but no quick fixes. By this time he had had to downsize his own rather optimistic predictions of the earlier years. The book became an immediate best seller, selling around 90,000 copies both sides of the Atlantic.
Those ideas are today's facts. However the emancipation offered by the new technology is for many a liberty too far. The work patterns of the last 10 years are gone for ever. Only half the workforce now has a permanent job. Attractive as it might appear, portfolio working has its limitations even for those with instantly recognisable skills. And when things in the outside world go wrong, it's not only the cat who suffers.
The problem at the moment is that families and relationships of all sorts are acting as the shock absorbers in the new, tense world. Life is tough but people still think the family is to blame if you had a good family it would be all right. Okay, so the schools are terrible but if you had a good family it would be fine. If your relationships were better we could handle all this. It's just not true. I think these poor shock absorber things called relationships and families need help. And they need help first of all with understanding what's going on.
Handy considers that far too many people both inside and outside the workplace still have not come to terms with the changes technology has wrought.
"We are no longer a manufacturing economy. The things we are making money out of are different. Effectively they are services and information. If you change the things you make, you change the shape of organisations, you change the way people relate to them and that changes the way they relate to each other in their homes. It changes the role of women. There's a lot more space for women and funnily enough less space for men." Now it's more to do with fingers and brains and sensitivity. "In a sense things, that have been bred out of men.
SIDELINED as bread winners, men can easily feel emasculated, which in itself breeds more problems. And here, Handy believes, they are their own worst enemies. "Men don't like talking about it. It is the reversal of everything they are used to. But they must learn to. Which is why ageing men like me must stand up and say I was wrong and there are things that you can learn.
"We have conquered communism. We have been successful by all the measurable statistics. But most people today are miserable, saying it doesn't seem to be any better than it used to be. We can't put the clock back. It will be nice for some people. Rather few people in fact. But for a lot of people it's going to be rather horrible unless they get their act together.
Which is what Charles Handy hopes to spur people into doing, through his writing and talks. "I have great faith in human beings. I do believe they are resilient and I do believe where there's a will there's a way. The problem is there isn't a will in society at the moment to make the best of things for everybody."
