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Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.

Henry Mintzberg

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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Learned
Reading
Cannot
Like
Swimming
Leadership

More quotes by Henry Mintzberg

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Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
Henry Mintzberg
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Basically, managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action. Sometimes, managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.
Henry Mintzberg
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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?
Henry Mintzberg
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This obsession with leadership... It's not neutral it's American, this idea of the heroic leader who comes in on a white horse to save the day. I think it's killing American companies.
Henry Mintzberg
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Why does every generation have to think that he lives in the period with the greatest turbulence?
Henry Mintzberg
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Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.
Henry Mintzberg
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What we call a financial crisis is really at its core a crisis of management, and not just a crisis of management, but a crisis of management culture. ...In other words, what you had is a detachment of people who know the business from people who are running the business.
Henry Mintzberg
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Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
Henry Mintzberg
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Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations... Once managers understand this, they can avoid other costly misadventures caused by applying formal techniques, without judgement and intuition, to problem solving.
Henry Mintzberg
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We find that the manager, particularly at senior levels, is overburdened with work. With the increasing complexity of modern organizations and their problems, he is destined to become more so. He is driven to brevity, fragmentation, and superficiality in his tasks, yet he cannot easily delegate them because of the nature of his information.
Henry Mintzberg
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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.
Henry Mintzberg
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While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
Henry Mintzberg
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Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details.
Henry Mintzberg
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Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
Henry Mintzberg
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Companies are communities. Theres a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success.
Henry Mintzberg
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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.
Henry Mintzberg
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Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
Henry Mintzberg
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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
Henry Mintzberg
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Corporations are economic entities, to be sure, but they are also social institutions that must justify their existence by their overall contribution to society.
Henry Mintzberg
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We're all flawed, but basically, effective managers are people whose flaws are not fatal under the circumstances. Maybe the best managers are simply ordinary, healthy people who aren't too screwed up.
Henry Mintzberg