Quote

Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.

Henry Mintzberg

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Point
Planning
Opposite
Opposites
Strategy
Consequence
Starting

More quotes by Henry Mintzberg

Image
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
Image
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
Image
Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
Image
Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
Image
Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Managers who don't lead are quite discouraging, but leaders who don't manage don't know what's going on. It's a phony separation that people are making between the two.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
Image
Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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