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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
Leadership
Learned
Reading
Cannot
Like
Swimming
More quotes by Henry Mintzberg
Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
Henry Mintzberg
Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
Henry Mintzberg
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
The idea that you can take smart but inexperienced 25-year-olds who never managed anything and turn them into effective managers via two years of classroom training is ludicrous.
Henry Mintzberg
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
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
The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting subtle discontinuities that may undermine a business in the future. And for that there is no technique, no program, just a sharp mind in touch with the situation.
Henry Mintzberg
Why does every generation have to think that he lives in the period with the greatest turbulence?
Henry Mintzberg
Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details.
Henry Mintzberg
Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.
Henry Mintzberg
If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organise, co-ordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words.
Henry Mintzberg
An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
Henry Mintzberg
While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
Henry Mintzberg
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
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
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
Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
Henry Mintzberg
Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
Henry Mintzberg
If the private sectors are about markets and the public sectors are about governments, then the plural sector is about communities.
Henry Mintzberg
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
