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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.

Henry Mintzberg

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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
People
Aren
Ordinary
Screwed
Whose
Fatal
Circumstances
Flawed
Healthy
Flaws
Simply
Managers
Maybe
Effective
Best
Basically

More quotes by 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.
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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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Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
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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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Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.
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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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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.
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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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Why does every generation have to think that he lives in the period with the greatest turbulence?
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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.
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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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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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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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While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
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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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Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
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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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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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Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
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