Quote

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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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Control
Managers
Asks
Relate
Four
Likely
Words
Plan
Tell
Watches
Ordinate
Plans
Organise
Watch
Provoking
Motivational
Surprised

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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.
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Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
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My feeling about executive bonuses is that any candidate for a chief executive job who even raises the issue of bonuses should be dismissed out of hand.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
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Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.
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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
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Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
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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.
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Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
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Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.
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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.
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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.
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Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.
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Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes.
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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.
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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.
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