79 Quotes by Henry Mintzberg

Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense

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.

Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing

Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.

Learning is not doing; it is reflecting on doing.

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.

Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions

Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.

Organizations are communities of human beings, not collections of human resources