Quote

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

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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Situation
Subtle
Lying
Technique
Future
Strategy
Discontinuities
Business
Challenge
Detecting
May
Touch
Discontinuity
Real
Program
Crafting
Mind
Lies
Undermine
Challenges
Sharp

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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.
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Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
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Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.
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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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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?
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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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Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
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Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
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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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Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
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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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Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
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Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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