Quote

An unsuccessful manager blames failure on his obligations the effective manager turns them to his own advantage. A speech is a chance to lobby...a visit to an important customer a chance to extract trade information.

Henry Mintzberg

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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
Turns
Customers
Unsuccessful
Important
Blame
Obligations
Trade
Customer
Advantage
Manager
Speech
Visit
Failure
Managers
Blames
Information
Effective
Lobby
Chance
Obligation
Extract

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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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Why does every generation have to think that he lives in the period with the greatest turbulence?
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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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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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Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
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Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
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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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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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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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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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Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
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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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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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Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.
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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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Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.
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Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
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While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.
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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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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.
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