Henry Mintzberg
Henry Mintzberg
Henry Mintzberg, OC OQ FRSCis an internationally renowned academic and author on business and management. He is currently the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he has been teaching since 1968...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth2 September 1939
CountryCanada
Henry Mintzberg quotes about
parachute understanding
Often, M.B.A.s will parachute around from one company or industry to another, without really understanding what's behind it.
leadership reading swimming
Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.
smart people needs
When the world is predictable you need smart people. When the world is unpredictable you need adaptable people.
learning knowledge community
An enterprise is a community of human beings, not a collection of "human resources".
two creative leader
A leader has to be one of two things: he either has to be a brilliant visionary himself, a truly creative strategist, in which case he can do what he likes and get away with it; or else he has to be a true empowerer who can bring out the best in others.
standards-set being-the-best lows
Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.
somewhere-else ideas marketing
The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor. It's this idea of standing on a pedestal and you wave your baton and accounting comes in, and you wave it somewhere else and marketing chimes in with accounting, and they all sound very glorious. But management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong.
reflecting
Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing.
strategy sophisticated social
Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes.
jobs our-society talent
No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources.
leadership people empowerment
Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people.
years two people
What I have against M.B.A.s is the assumption that you come out of a two-year program probably never having been a manager - at least for full-time younger people M.B.A. programs - and assume you are ready to manage.
jobs organization people
Organizations should be built and managers should be functioning so people can be naturally empowered. If someone's doing their job, if someone's working in one of your warehouses, say, they should know their job better than anybody. They don't need to be 'empowered,' but encouraged and left alone to be able to do what they know best.
common-sense risk management
Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense