Musings on Management
Henry Mintzberg - Harvard Business Review, July-August 1996 (Reprint 96407)

Mintzberg is a renowned management thinker, teacher and author and his words are generally succinct and highly applicable to whatever the situation. When I came across this HBR paper it took my interest; partly because anything Mintzberg has to say is worth reading but mostly because the sub-title is "Ten ideas designed to rile everyone who cares about management."

Mintzberg opens by saying "Management is a curious phenomenon, it is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense." That's enough to generate interest.

The following ideas offered in this article by this esteemed management professor reinforced for me that he is well worth taking note of. The headings from the article (reference above) are listed here for you to think about.

• Organizations don't have tops and bottoms.
• It is time to delayer the delayerers.
• Lean is mean and doesn't even improve long-term profits
• The trouble with most strategies are chief executives who believe
  themselves to be strategists
• Decentralization centralizes, empowerment disempowers,
  and measurement doesn't measure up.
• Great organizations, once created, don't need great leaders.
• Great organizations have souls; any word with a de or a re in front of it is
  likely to destroy those souls
• It is time to close down conventional M.B.A. programs.
• Organizations need continuous care, not interventionist cures.

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