Quote

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

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
Managers
Delegates
Information
Particularly
Brevity
Modern
Tasks
Manager
Nature
Driven
Organizations
Cannot
Easily
Destined
Overburdened
Become
Organization
Senior
Fragmentation
Problem
Problems
Increasing
Delegate
Find
Complexity
Superficiality
Work
Levels

More quotes by Henry Mintzberg

Image
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
Henry Mintzberg
Image
While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
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
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
Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
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
If the private sectors are about markets and the public sectors are about governments, then the plural sector is about communities.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
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
Image
An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.
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
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
Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
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
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
Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
Henry Mintzberg
Image
Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.
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