Henry Mintzberg
![Henry Mintzberg](/assets/img/authors/henry-mintzberg.jpg)
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.
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.
practice people way
You can teach all sorts of things that improve the practice of management with people who are managers. What you cannot do is teach management to somebody who is not a manager, the way you cannot teach surgery to somebody whose not a surgeon.
two people leader
Managers who don't lead are quite discouraging, but leaders who don't manage don't know what's going on. It's a phony separation that people are making between the two.
technology iphone television
So technologies, whether it is a telephone or an iPhone, computers in general or automobiles, television even, all individualize us. We all sit in front of our iPhones and communicating but are we really communicating?