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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
Like
Swimming
Leadership
Learned
Reading
Cannot

More quotes by Henry Mintzberg

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Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
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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Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
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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If the private sectors are about markets and the public sectors are about governments, then the plural sector is about communities.
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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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.
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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Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.
Henry Mintzberg
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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
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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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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Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
Henry Mintzberg
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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
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Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
Henry Mintzberg
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An unsuccessful manager blames failure on his obligations the effective manager turns them to his own advantage. A speech is a chance to lobby...a visit to an important customer a chance to extract trade information.
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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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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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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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