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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.

Henry Mintzberg

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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Horse
Ideas
Leadership
Think
Neutral
Thinking
Leader
Heroic
Company
Obsession
American
Companies
Idea
Killing
White
Save
Comes

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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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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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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.
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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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Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
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Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
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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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Corporations are economic entities, to be sure, but they are also social institutions that must justify their existence by their overall contribution to society.
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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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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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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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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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While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
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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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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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Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
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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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Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.
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