The Age of Paradox

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Handy, C. (1994). The Age of Paradox. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

Life is paradox, claims Charles Handy. Paradox is everywhere in various levels of our life. Like the weather, paradoxes are “something to be lived with, coped with, and made sense of, in life, in work, in the community and among nations” (13). Handy addresses the paradoxes of this age sorting them into nine categories; the paradox of intelligence, work, productivity, time, riches, organization, aging, individual, and justice. He suggests three principles in order to take rhythm of balancing between simultaneous opposites; the sigmoid curve, the doughnut principle, and the Chinese contract. First, in individuals and organizations, there is a cycle of ups and downs but important thing is that the cycle should continuously go upward. Leaders should prepare to carry the upward cycle through enduring. Second, there should be balancing between a core and a bounded space. Balance between what we have to do and what we could do or could be should be in continuous tension in order to advance the both. Third, most of life is made up of opposites, so that pursuing better results is required of third-angle thinking or trinitarian approach which “reconcile or illuminate the opposites”( 99).
Handy’s insight about “federalism” and “the queen’s great matter” enlightened me. An effective leader in multi-cultural setting, should and would not be a person who direct people into a certain direction but he or she should be a person who helps people focus on their own goals and visions within larger and more exclusive goal. Successful leaders are the ones who “know that their main task is to carry the people with them” for their sake (122). By doing this, an organization or a community could exist as an organism rather than a stiff institution.