Quote

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

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
Whose
Fatal
Circumstances
Flawed
Healthy
Flaws
Simply
Managers
Maybe
Effective
Best
Basically
People
Aren
Ordinary
Screwed

More quotes by Henry Mintzberg

Image
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
Image
Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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
Image
Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
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
Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
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
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
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
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
Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
Henry Mintzberg