Henry Mintzberg quotes - page 2

The formalization of behavior takes formal power away from the workers and the managers who supervise them and concentrates it near the top of the line hierarchy and in the technostructure, thus centralizing the organization in both dimensions. The result is Type A decentralization. Training and indoctrination produces exactly the opposite effect: it develops expertise below the middle line, thereby decentralizing the structure in both dimensions (Type E). Putting these two conclusions together, we can see that specialization of the unskilled type centralizes the structure in both dimensions, whereas specialization of the skilled or professional type decentralizes it in both dimensions. (Henry Mintzberg)
We create organizations to serve us, but somehow they also force us to serve them. Sometimes it feels as if our institutions have run out of control, like the machinery of Charlie Chaplin's film Modem Times. Why we should become slaves to our servants... A society of organizations is one in which organizations enter our lives as influential forces in a great many ways - in how we work, what we eat, how we get educated and cured of our illnesses, how we get entertained, and how our ideas are shaped. The ways in which we try to control our organization and our organization in return try to control us become major issues in the lives of all of us. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
When the world is predictable you need smart people. When the world is unpredictable you need adaptable people. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
A leader has to be one of two things: he either has to be a brilliant visionary himself, a truly creative strategist, in which case he can do what he likes and get away with it; or else he has to be a true empowerer who can bring out the best in others. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
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. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse. (Henry Mintzberg)
Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor. It's this idea of standing on a pedestal and you wave your baton and accounting comes in, and you wave it somewhere else and marketing chimes in with accounting, and they all sound very glorious. But management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
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. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called rationality. It lies in the blend of clearheaded logic and powerful intuition. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of "communityship. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
An enterprise is a community of human beings, not a collection of "human resources". View quote
Henry Mintzberg
While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing. (Henry Mintzberg)
Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
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. View quote
Henry Mintzberg
An obsession with control generally seems to reflect a fear of uncertainty. View quote
Henry Mintzberg