Henry Mintzberg Quotations

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.

We have great managers who havent spent a day in management school. Do we have great surgeons that havent spent a day in surgical school?

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.

That is the trouble with flying: We always have to return to airports. Thank of how much fun flying would be if we didn't have to return to airports.

This obsession with leadership... It's not neutral; it's American, this idea of the heroic leader who comes in on a white horse to save the day. I think it's killing American companies.

Technologies tend to undermine community and encourage individualism.

To 'turn around' is to end up facing the same way. Maybe that is the problem, all the turning organizations around.

It is time to recognize conventional MBA programs for what they are - or else to close them down. They are specialized training in the functions of business, not general educating in the practice of management.

Everyone is against micro managing but macro managing means you're working at the big picture but don't know the details.

Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it