Lessons from Henry Minztberg

Henry Mintzberg, a renowned management thinker and academic, has consistently challenged conventional wisdom in the fields of management and strategy for decades. His work, grounded in real-world observation, offers a more nuanced and holistic perspective on what managers actually do, how strategy is truly formed, and how organizations can function more effectively.

On the True Nature of Management

Mintzberg's research demystified the role of the manager, moving beyond the classic "plan, organize, coordinate, and control" framework to reveal a more fragmented, dynamic, and people-centric reality.

"Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet." [1][2] This foundational quote encapsulates Mintzberg's holistic view of management as a discipline that blends analytical thinking with intuition and hands-on experience.
"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." [1] This highlights the discrepancy between the theory and the reality of managerial work.
"The manager's job can be described in terms of various 'roles', or organized sets of behaviors identified with a position." This introduces his seminal work on the 10 managerial roles.
Learning: The 10 Managerial Roles. Mintzberg's research, detailed in The Nature of Managerial Work, identified ten primary roles that managers inhabit, categorized into three groups:
- Interpersonal Roles: Figurehead, Leader, and Liaison. [3][4]
- Informational Roles: Monitor, Disseminator, and Spokesperson. [3][4]
- Decisional Roles: Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator, and Negotiator. [3][4]
- Source: The Nature of Managerial Work (1973) and later elaborated in Mintzberg on Management (1989). [3][4]
"The prime occupational hazard of the manager is superficiality." [5] Mintzberg observed that the sheer volume and pace of managerial work often lead to a lack of deep focus on any single issue.
"The manager is encouraged by the realities of his work to...overload himself with work, to do things abruptly, to avoid wasting time.” In short, “in order to succeed, the manager must presumably become proficient at his superficiality.” [6]
- Source: The Nature of Managerial Work (1973). [6]
"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." [7][8] Mintzberg argues against the popular trend of separating leadership from management, seeing them as intrinsically linked.
"The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor...management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong." [1] This metaphor emphasizes the manager's role in dealing with the messy, unpredictable realities of organizational life.
"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." [9]
- Source: 'The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact,' Harvard Business Review (1975). [9]
"The key managerial processes are enormously complex and mysterious, drawing on the vaguest of information and using the least articulated of mental processes." [9]
"While hard data may inform the intellect, it is largely soft data that generates wisdom." [1][9] This underscores the importance of qualitative information and intuition in managerial decision-making.
- Source: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994). [9]
"To succeed, managers have to become proficient at their superficiality." [10] This points to the challenge managers face in balancing a wide range of tasks.
"Managing is about nuance as much as it is about decisiveness." [10]
"Basically, managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action." [7]
"The line between confidence and arrogance can be not only thin but also vague."
- Source: Managing (2009).

On Strategy: Planning vs. Emergence

Mintzberg is perhaps most famous for his critique of traditional strategic planning, advocating for a more emergent and learning-based approach to strategy formation.

"Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point." [1][11] This quote challenges the linear model of planning followed by action.
- Source: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (2000 edition). [1][11]
"Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers." [1][12]
"Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse." [1][11] This vivid metaphor illustrates the organic and often unpredictable nature of emergent strategy.
- Source: The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, Cases (2003). [11]
"Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions." [1][11] This definition broadens the concept of strategy beyond intentional plans to include consistent behaviors.
Learning: The 5 Ps of Strategy. To capture the complexity of the strategy process, Mintzberg proposed five definitions of strategy:
- Plan: A consciously intended course of action. [13][14]
- Ploy: A specific maneuver to outwit a competitor. [13][14]
- Pattern: A consistent stream of actions, whether intended or not. [13][14]
- Position: The organization's niche in its environment. [13][14]
- Perspective: An ingrained way of perceiving the world. [13][14]
- Source: "The Strategy Concept I: Five Ps for Strategy" (1987). [15]
Learning: Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategy. Mintzberg distinguished between deliberate strategies, which are the intended plans, and emergent strategies, which are the unplanned patterns that arise from the organization's actions and learning. [13] He argued that most real-world strategies are a blend of both.
"The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting subtle discontinuities that may undermine a business in the future. And for that there is no technique, no program, just a sharp mind in touch with the situation." [1][11]
- Source: The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, Cases (2003). [11]
"Strategy-making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated, subtle, and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes." [1][11]
- Source: Strategy Bites Back (2013). [11]
"Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations." [7][11]
- Source: "The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning," Harvard Business Review (1994). [11]
"Setting oneself on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail straight into an iceberg." [16] A powerful warning against rigid strategic plans.
- Source: As quoted in Team of Teams by Stanley McChrystal, citing The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. [16]
"Most of the time, strategies should not be formulating strategy at all; they should be getting on with implementing strategies they already have." [11]
"Every strategic change involves some new experience, a step into the unknown, the taking of some kind of risk." [10]
"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." [10]
"Strategy happens in the real world, not in the boardroom." [17]
"Organizations with tight controls, high reliance on formalized procedures, and a passion for consistency may lose the ability to experiment and innovate." [10]

On Organizations and People

Mintzberg consistently emphasizes the human element of organizations, viewing them as communities rather than mere collections of resources.

"Organizations are communities of human beings, not collections of human resources." [1] This quote is a powerful critique of the depersonalized language often used in management.
"Companies are communities. There's 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." [7][8]
"An enterprise is a community of human beings, not a collection of 'human resources'." [1]
"I am not a human resource, thank you, nor a human asset or human capital. I am a human being." [10]
"Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing."
"Society has become unmanageable as a result of management." [9]
- Source: Mintzberg on Management (1989). [9]
Learning: Organizational Configurations. In The Structuring of Organizations, Mintzberg proposed that organizations can be understood through five basic configurations, each with a dominant coordinating mechanism and a key part of the organization:
- Simple Structure: Coordinated by direct supervision from the strategic apex. [18][19]
- Machine Bureaucracy: Coordinated by the standardization of work processes from the technostructure. [18][19]
- Professional Bureaucracy: Coordinated by the standardization of skills in the operating core. [18][19]
- Divisionalized Form: Coordinated by the standardization of outputs from the middle line. [18][19]
- Adhocracy: Coordinated by mutual adjustment among support staff and the operating core. [18][19]
- Source: The Structuring of Organizations (1979) and later refined in Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations (1983). [18][20]
"We create organizations to serve us, but somehow they also force us to serve them." [12]
- Source: Mintzberg on Management (1989). [12]
"To 'turn around' is to end up facing the same way. Maybe that is the problem, all the turning organizations around." [21]
"Professionals require little direction and supervision. What they do require is protection and support." [9]
- Source: 'Covert Leadership: Notes on Managing Professionals,' Harvard Business Review (1998). [9]

On Learning and Development

A staunch critic of traditional MBA programs, Mintzberg advocates for learning that is rooted in experience and reflection.

"Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it." [1][21]
- Source: The Nature of Managerial Work (1980 edition). [1][21]
"Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing." [1][10] This emphasizes the critical role of reflection in the learning process.
"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."
"You can teach all sorts of things that improve the practice of management with people who are managers. What you cannot do is teach management to somebody who is not a manager, the way you cannot teach surgery to somebody whose not a surgeon."
"Effective managing therefore happens where art, craft, and science meet. But in a classroom of students without managerial experience, these have no place to meet — there is nothing to do." [7][12]
- Source: Managers Not MBAs (2005). [12]
"Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people." [1][21]
- Source: Simply Managing: What Managers Do — and Can Do Better (2013). [21]
"A leader has to be one of two things: he either has to be a brilliant visionary himself, a truly creative strategist... or else he has to be a true empowerer who can bring out the best in others." [9]
- Source: Quoted in The Drama of Leadership (1997). [9]
"Theory is a dirty word in some managerial quarters. That is rather curious, because all of us, managers especially, can no more get along without theories than libraries can get along without catalogs — and for the same reason: theories help us make sense of incoming information." [7][12]
- Source: Managers Not MBAs (2005). [12]
"Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best." [1]
"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."

For those interested in further exploring Henry Mintzberg's work, his official website, mintzberg.org, offers a wealth of articles, blog posts, and information on his books and programs. [19]

Learn more:

Lessons from Henry Minztberg

On the True Nature of Management

On Strategy: Planning vs. Emergence

On Organizations and People

On Learning and Development

Written by Antoine Buteau

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