Henry Mintzberg

Business management expert

• Born: September 2, 1939
• Birthplace: Montreal, Quebec

Education: McGill University; Sir George Williams University (Concordia University); Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Significance: Henry Mintzberg’s original research on corporations around the world has challenged conventional wisdom about the dynamics of business management and redefined the meaning of business leadership.

Background

Henry Mintzberg earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Montreal’s McGill University in 1961, as well as a bachelor’s in general studies from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University). After working for the Canadian public railroad system’s Operational Research Branch from 1961 to 1963, he was accepted for postgraduate work in business management at the Sloan School of Management, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mintzberg graduated with a master’s degree in 1965 and went onto earn his PhD in 1968.

Business Management Research

After completing his doctoral work, Mintzberg accepted a teaching position at McGill, and he began gathering original research on how businesses were managed. Over the next eight years, he talked to more than eighty leaders in businesses around the globe. What he found was illuminating. The traditional models for business management introduced in MBA programs had long emphasized the ability of a manager to analyze business conditions, make logical conclusions based on hard data, and implement sound decisions around the clock. Mintzberg’s research revealed a different model. Business management acumen was based not on analysis but on synthesis; effective business leaders, far from immersing themselves in data and maintaining distance from operations, involved themselves with the workforce, listened to diverse perspectives, and encouraged input. Mintzberg also discovered that successful managers delegated responsibility and spent most of their time processing information from up and down a network chain. Classroom preparation and theoretical models, Mintzberg found, only created egos and managers unwilling or unable to listen.

Based on his research, Mintzberg developed a model for different business organizations. He divided businesses into five broad structures, each with its own management dynamic: 1) simple structures, such as family businesses, neighborhood businesses, start-up companies and early stage companies that relied largely on one leader; 2) machine bureaucracies, such as more developed companies that had layers of responsibility and management and often redundant bureaucracy; 3) "divisionalized" forms, which were most often global companies with no central authority but each division operating with its own management team; 4) professional bureaucracies, such as a company specializing in a single product or service (like a hospital or a law firm) with a central authority and delegated levels of operational management; and 5) "adhocracies," a term Mintzberg coined to refer to technology companies that maintained an almost entirely digital presence, and most often operated in small teams, project to project, with little central authority save for project managers.

In addition, Mintzberg pioneered a management maintenance model that showed that any network, regardless of size, comprised six cooperative layers of operation: the strategic apex (the top level of decision makers); the middle line (senior management engaged in directing the day-to-day operations); the operating core (those engaged in the actual hands-on operations); the technical structure (those who maintained critical information systems); the support staff (the administrative staff that facilitated operations and negotiated directly with clients or customers); and the ideology division (those in the position to conceptualize the direction and development of the business).

In each case, Mintzberg argued, managers were responsible for getting things done—a radical premise that ran counter to conventional wisdom that saw managers as power-driven individuals interested primarily in self-survival within a network. Rather, effective management came from virtues that Mintzberg claimed had not been appreciated within business models: effective listening, empathetic decision making, communication skills, and, above all, active learning—responding to day-to-day conditions rather than relying on classroom models and business theories. He divided leadership into three equally important skills: interpersonal skills (listening and communicating with others); informational skills (expertise and market know-how); and decisional skills (the ability to gather information and in turn control and direct operations). Truly successful business leaders converted pressure into effective action only by paying close to attention to daily operations, listening carefully to others in the network, and ultimately by being willing to adjust actions and revisit decisions.

Mintzberg retired from full-time teaching in the mid-1980s but remains on the faculty of McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Business Management as the John Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies (Strategy and Organization) and the faculty director of International Masters for Health Leadership. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, Université d’Aix-Marseille, École des Hautes Études Commerciales Montréal, London Business School, and INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France.

Impact

Mintzberg became internationally respected for his work in redefining the dynamics of business leadership. He has written more than a dozen books, many of which have become standards in the field, as well as 170 often controversial and provocative articles. One controversial theme in his work, outlined in his book Managers Not MBAs, is that business schools do not prepare people to manage businesses because MBA courses teach analysis, rather than synthesis, and synthesis is essential to effective management.

Mintzberg is an officer of the Order of Canada (1997), an officer of the National Order of Quebec (1998), and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1980), International Academy of Management (1985), Academy of Management (1987), and the World Academy of Productivity Sciences (1997). Among his many other honors are the International Leadership Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2013) and McGill University’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership in Learning (2014).

Personal Life

Mintzberg has a partner, Dulcie; two daughters; and three grandchildren. He enjoys bicycling, skating, and canoeing. He also collects what he calls "beaver sculptures," wood that has been gnawed by beavers.

Principal Works

• The Structuring of Organizations, 1979
• Mintzberg on Management, 1989
• Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations, 1992
• Managers Not MBAs, 2005
• Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, 2013
• Simply Managing: What Managers Do and Can Do Better, 2013

Bibliography

Datar, S., D. Garvin, and P. Cullen. Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroad. Cambridge: Harvard Business Rev. P, 2010. Print.

Dixit, A., and B. Nalebuff. Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life. New York: Norton, 1993. Print.

"Guru: Henry Mintzberg." Economist. Economist Newspaper, 16 Jan. 2009. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.

Kaufman, J. The Personal MBA: Mastering the Art of Business. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.

Mintzberg, Henry. "Résumé." Henry Mintzberg. Henry Mintzberg, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.

Stack, J., and B. Burlingham. The Great Game of Business: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Business. New York: Crown, 2013. Print.