Meeting my Hero

It isn't often in life that you get to meet somebody who truly changed your life 180 degrees and placed you on a different path. In May of this year I got to meet Charles Handy who was talking about his new book called "Myself & other more important matters" which is a little bit more of an autobiography.

Well he was signing his book and I'd also bought a copy of the book that changed my life called the 'Age of Unreason' which painted a vision of a world that unless I took control of furthering my education wasn't going to be a very pleasant one. I was in Banking at the time just before it started shedding staff and closing branches (to become trendy wine bars as the advert goes).

So I started my continuing education and in March 2006 I graduated with an MBA. however I did manage to have a brief chat and say thank you to Charles Handy and to say that if I had not read his book I probably would not have been standing where I am today and in my current job.

Handy has influenced my thinking greatly and especially in my thesis where I started to appreciate the importance of people in the process of knowledge management especially as we move towards the era of the knowledge worker. If you ever get the chance read some of his works such as the Empty Raincoat and the Hungry Spirit which are not only managerial classics they do provoke stimulate and challenge you to look at the whole of your organisation and the people within it and their aspirations.

As Duke Leto in Dune says - without the opportunity to have challenges, something within us withers and dies.

I mention this today as the place where I now work and where I sit used to be an office - how I remember it well as it was where I was interviewed for my very first job in July 1980.

Sometimes we take very long loops in our life.