By Bob Clark
Dec. 16, 2010
Management? It’s Not What You Think!
By Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel
AMACOM, New York, NY
Sept. 2010, 192 pages, $22
For decades publishers have flooded the market with self-help books on management and leadership. In a very crowded field, AMACON has delivered a new book on the subject sure to entertain and enlighten.
The approach of the book is to provoke thought and reflection rather than serve up a new tome on management processes. To do this, the authors have assembled a collection of excellent articles on management. The result is a book that presents a fresh look at managing. To quote the authors, the intent is for readers “to think about the art and craft of managing – the seeing and the feeling and the doing, beyond the thinking and the analyzing and the planning.”
The three authors are led by Henry Mintzberg, a well-known author on management topics and a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His collaborators are Bruce Ahlstrand from Trent University in Ontario, Canada, and Joseph Lampel from City University London in England.
The articles gathered up by the trio of professors include items from Peter Drucker, some of Mintzberg’s articles, and a wide array of others. Some are academic, some are tongue-in-cheek, and some are provocative – but all provide insight into the realities of management.
An example is an article by Mintzberg, included in a chapter on Management Myths. Among its observations are the following:
- Organizations don’t have tops or bottoms. Organizations have outer people (those connected directly to the world) and inner people (those who are disconnected from the world) – and between the two are middle managers working to connect the two groups in order to move forward.
- Organizations need continuous care, not interventionist cures. Mintzberg argues that the concept of nursing is a better model for managing than medicine. All successful organizations need continuing care, not the application of a quick fix. He also posits that for this reason women may make better managers than men.
The power of this collection of articles is its effective push back on the notion that management and leadership are all about systematic thinking. The authors correctly advise readers to see and feel the organization as much as analyze and think about it.
The three professors have produced a solid contribution to the topics of leading and managing. Anyone trying to lead an organization or manage a business can benefit by spending time with this book.
Bob Clark is the president of RWC Consulting LLC and has more than 30 years’ experience in labor-management relations. He provides consulting help in labor relations and is an adjunct professor at Concordia University in Ann Arbor.