Quote

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

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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Numbers
Causing
Vision
Confuse
Often
Spoil
Real
Manipulation
Thinking
Strategic
Managers
Planning
Indeed
Spoils

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Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.
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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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Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
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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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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.
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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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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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Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
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Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes.
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Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
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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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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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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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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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