What’s your customer’s or employer’s business and work model? It may follow the Handy/Hutchins model or be some variation. Critical questions to ask your employer or customer are: Are you or your process part of your organization’s inner, middle, or outer rings. If your process is not part of the organizational core, then what’s the …
Coping with the Handy model is a huge problem for organizations as more workers see the handwriting on the wall and morph into Brand U’s. This started 15 years ago, but is now accelerating world wide. The Economist Magazine summed it up neatly: “Focusing on core competencies might mean outsourcing peripheral employees, but it also …
The Internet is a huge driver of the Handy model. Look at how Amazon.com reinvents itself and changes its business model. Amazon.com is the poster company of the ‘New Economy’ and for most ebusiness. Amazon.com started as an online bookseller but has morphed every month into a purveyer new goods and services.
Handy model is a real organizational challenge to retain and motivate employees. As Handy said: “The old model of the corporation was a piece of property, a piece of real estate. It was, quite simply, the property of its owners. … The new model is based on an understanding that to hold people inside the …
The Handy/Hutchins work model is devilishly simple. It explains much of what’s happening in the workplace and provides the rationale for the Brand U trend. When Handy first proposed his vision of the corporate workplace, it was considered too bleak and radical. Middle managers were considered indispensable. Quality, information systems, accounting, training, industrial engineering, and …
Charles Handy, probably today’s smartest workplace guru, said more than ten years ago that work is fundamentally changing. He coined the notion of ½ by 2 by 3 rule of corporate fitness. This workplace is characterized by half as many people on the payroll, paid twice as much, producing three times as much. Innovation and …
There are not enough jobs for people. This started about 20 years ago and is now a global phenomenon. Well, those days are gone as Japan’s worst recession since World War II continues. Japanese unemployment rate in June 1999 hit a record high as the US unemployment rate hit historic lows. The world’s second largest …
Paradigm: Conceptual framework that permits the explanation and investigation of phenomena or objects of study in a field of inquiry; a pattern or model.[i] [i] Jost, David, Ed., The American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
Lifelong learning has become a reality for all Brand U’s. A recent study at Washington State University concluded that regardless of age, income, race, and ethnicity, the great majority of us want to continue our education and training throughout our lives. Eighty-one percent of the Brand U’s believed that additional training is critical for their …
Many of us chose careers and work largely based on assumptions that have changed dramatically over the last several years. That’s what Working It is all about. While organizational paternalism and employee entitlement attitudes may still exist in some companies, we’re moving from organizational command-and-control to the Brand U world of self managed teams, self-directed …