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While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom.

Henry Mintzberg

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Henry Mintzberg
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: September 2
Author
Economist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Montreal
Quebec
May
Hard
Generates
Inform
Largely
Soft
Data
Intellect
Wisdom

More quotes by Henry Mintzberg

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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.
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An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty.
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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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Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.
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Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.
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Learning is not doing it is reflecting on doing.
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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.
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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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Organizations should be built and managers should be functioning so people can be naturally empowered. If someone's doing their job, if someone's working in one of your warehouses, say, they should know their job better than anybody. They don't need to be 'empowered,' but encouraged and left alone to be able to do what they know 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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Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense
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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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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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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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If the private sectors are about markets and the public sectors are about governments, then the plural sector is about communities.
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Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.
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Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.
Henry Mintzberg
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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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Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing
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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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