The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy.

3/5 rating. 269 pages.

Book #38 of 2022. Read September 28, 2022.

This book talks all about discontinuous change and its prevalence in the future.

The title is alluding to the fact that the future is going to require us to think in unreasonable ways in order to prosper. With changes in so many different aspects of business and life, we will need to become able to think in new and status-quo-breaking ways. Just because something has always been done one way, does not mean it is the best way forward. Discontinuous change is going to rule the future.

This book was copyrighted in 1989. One of the fun things about reading books about business and technology from that time period is to see how prescient they are in their predictions. Charles does a great job realizing some of the huge changes in work. He especially foresees telecommuting and the push for gig economies and less hierarchical and traditional businesses. As he says: “In the new organizations of the information society it is people who are the key assets”.

This all-important realization of the shift to a knowledge economy highlights the idea that to properly prepare for the future, we will have to think of things in new ways.

There were some interesting ideas in this book, and it was cool to see someone predict some of today’s trends. Apart from that, it is important to not be cordoned in by tradition and what has “always been done”. But this is about the only real important takeaways. You can now skip reading the book.

Quotes:

“Change, after all, is only another word for growth, another synonym for learning. We can all do it, and enjoy it, if we want to.”

“Technology in itself is neutral. We can use it to enrich our lives or to let them lose all meaning.”

“For organizations as for individuals, life is a book still to be written.”

“More difficult than forgiving others is to forgive oneself. That turns out to be one of the real blocks to change. We as individuals need to accept our past but then to turn our backs on it.”

“‘What do you do?’ no longer means ‘What is your job?’ but ‘How do you occupy your time?’”

“Life was intense, interesting, and, yes, involved.”

“Care is not a word to be found in many organizational textbooks, or in books on learning theory, but it should be.”

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