Conversation with Charles Handy - Otto Scharmer

well. What I’m saying is that there are four very distinctcultures or styles, management, or organization that youcan find pure examples of anywhere, really. And the realityis that they are all there at the same time. To be moreaccurate—in the same organization in the same field.COS: Talking about your experience—the most crucialchallenge probably is to make these different cultures talkwith each other and understand each other and to makethem have a dialog within companies.Charles Handy: There are two. The first challenge is tomake sure you have the right mix of cultures in the firstplace. The second is that they have to talk to each otherand live with each other. I guess the whole underlyingtheme of my work is that if you understand differences,you can behave more appropriately. If you understand,you feel less confusion; if you understand, you feel lessstress; if you understand, you can moderate your own behavior.If I know what dress is expected of me in a situation,I can dress. A lot of great problems with our children,for instance, who wanted to express their individuality intheir clothes when they were young teenagers, was gettingthem to understand that in certain occasions, it was moreappropriate to dress like adults, even if they didn’t like it.As they grew older, they began to understand that thatwasn’t actually denying their individuality, it was just thatit would be easier for other people to accept them and forthem to merge into the thing if they actually dressed in theright uniform. Understanding helped them change and adapt their behavior. This is whatthat book is all about: understanding and understanding differences. The paradox aboutunderstanding is the necessity of contradictions.And I don’t think understanding is enough. You have to do, and you have to reflect.We haven’t talked about learning. Learning to me is experiment, it is curiosity, a questionfull of life. Learning is experiment followed by reflection. And in that process, you needideas, you need concepts to explain, to experiment. And in my view, most organizationsare about experiments but without the questions, without the reflection, without the ideas.Somebody said that learning is experience understood in tranquility. So, you haveto have the experience, and then you have to understand it. In order to understand it,you have to have the urge to understand it. You have to have the questions in your mind,the curiosity, and you have to have the ideas, the concepts that will explain it. And youhave to have the time, the reflection, to do it.The discovery is the whole process. Learning is discovery,isn’t it? Discovery is curiosity, the stepping into theLearning to me is experiment, it iscuriosity, a question full of life.unknown, the experiment as well as the concepts and thetime to understand that experiment. It is the whole processof putting the pieces together which is what I think islacking in most organizations. The concepts are in a classroomsomewhere or in a book; the experience is out there. The time for reflection is afterretirement, and the curiosity perhaps never exists, because—© Elizabeth HandyConversation with Charles Handy SCHARMER75Elizabeth Handy: There is no time.Charles Handy: What I am trying to do, I suppose, is to provide the ideas and, to someextent, the curiosity. If I can make my books interesting enough to read, people start tothink. Now, there are concepts—and they use some but not others—which relate to theirexperience. What I can’t provide them with, of course, is a sort of enclosed space for allthese things to happen at once.REFLECTIONS, Volume 1, Number 2