Quotes from Henry Mintzberg

Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet

Organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called rationality. It lies in the blend of clearheaded logic and powerful intuition

Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing.

leadership is a sacred trust earned from the respect of those

being a manager' means not merely assuming a position of authority but also becoming more dependent on others

Managing is about nuance as much as it is about decisiveness.

A good part of the work of managing involves doing what specialists do, but in particular ways that make use of the manager's special contacts, status, and information.

Consistency: The strategy must not present mutually inconsistent goals and policies. Consonance: The strategy must represent an adaptive response to the external environment and to the critical changes occurring within it. Advantage: The strategy must provide for the creation and/or maintenance of a competitive advantage in the selected area of activity. Feasibility: The strategy must neither overtax available resources nor create unsolvable subproblems.

Does this sharing raise the risk that confidential information will fall into the wrong hands? Sure, sometimes (although refusing to share information is often a smokescreen for political games). But contrast this with the benefits of having better-informed people all around.

The line between confidence and arrogance can be not only thin but also vague.

At its simplest, the design school proposes a model of strategy making that seeks to attain a match, or fit, between internal capabilities and external possibilities.

To succeed, managers have to become proficient at their superficiality.

To conclude, in this chapter we have seen the characteristics of managing, as they were then and remain now: the pace, brevity, variety, fragmentation; the interruptions; the orientation to action; the oral aspect of the information; the lateral nature of much of the communication; and the tricky problem of exercising control without quite being in control.

To many of these writers, planning became not just an approach to strategy formation but a virtual religion to be promulgated with the fervor of missionaries.

Do they function as collections of Human Resources or as communities of human beings?

Many of us are so busy texting and tweeting that we barely have time for meeting and musing. Where are we supposed to get the meaning?

from Inkpen and Choudhury, 1995:313-323) … Strategy absence need not be associated with organizational failure…. Deliberate building in of strategy absence may promote flexibility in an organization…. Organizations with tight controls, high reliance on formalized procedures, and a passion for consistency may lose the ability to experiment and innovate.

to be a successful manager, let alone—dare I say—a great leader, maybe you don't have to be wonderful so much as more or less emotionally healthy and clearheaded.

can any organization really be sure of its strengths before it tests them? Every strategic change involves some new experience, a step into the unknown, the taking of some kind of risk. Therefore no organization can ever be sure in advance whether an established competence will prove to be a strength or a weakness.

If you want to understand the difference between a network and a community, ask your Facebook friends to help paint your house. Networks connect; communities care.

Much information important for strategy making never does become hard fact. The expression on a customer's face, the mood in the factory, the tone of voice of a government official, all of this can be information for the manager but not for the formal system.

Moreover, a single story from one disgruntled customer may be worth more than all those reams of market research data simply because, while the latter may identify a problem, it is the former that can suggest the solution.

while hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that builds wisdom.

Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.