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Mintzberg: Real leaders don’t take bonuses

Published: 12 October 2011

This is Part 1 in a series of interviews with the gurus of leadership and management theory.

When it comes to thought leaders on management in Canada, the first name that often comes to mind is Henry Mintzberg, the iconoclast and internationally renowned Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ, who has been a source of provocative ideas for more than four decades. Prof. Mintzberg has pioneered an alternative to the MBA program, the International Masters Program in Practicing Management, and CoachingOurselves.com, a social learning site in which managers can pick from a shelf of topics for group executive development. His work currently is on updating some thoughts on managing health care and a five-part electronic pamphlet he intends to publish, Rebalancing Society: Radical Renewal Beyond Left, Right and Center.

I think of you as a debunker. People walk around with a lot of myths of management, things they subscribe to that you have shown are dead wrong. What are the top notions you think people need to reframe their thinking on?

First, that leadership should be separate from management. Second, strategies are planned. Third, that executive bonuses make companies better. I could go on for a month with a list, but those are the top ones.

Let's start with the prevailing belief that leadership is different from management - and above management in importance.

Managers who don't lead are quite discouraging, but leaders who don't manage don't know what's going on. It's a phony separation that people are making between the two. By the way, Peter Drucker made the same kind of distinction 50 years ago, except he distinguished managers from administrators, so the pattern is that we keep upping the vocabulary. Next it will be heroes are different from leaders, and then gods are different from heroes.

It's the idea that somehow you can succeed by being above the fray, a leader, dealing with the big stuff, while other people do the small stuff. But you can't do the big stuff unless you understand the little stuff. To use a metaphor, painting the big picture has to be done with brush strokes. So you need to know what's going on in your organization - you can't be aloof and apart from it.

That leads to the second myth, that strategy is somehow immaculately conceived in offices, whereas strategies are actually learned on the ground. My favourite story is IKEA. You know how it ended up with knock-down furniture, which today is the heart-and-soul of their strategy, one of the prime factors distinguishing them from other sellers of furniture? It started when a worker tried to get a table into his car and had to take the legs off. Somebody said, "Hmm, maybe customers have to do that, too."

That's how strategies are developed. Their service strategy came when they were mobbed at a new building in Stockholm and couldn't handle the crowds, so they took the counters away and let people find the stuff themselves. That's an example of the way companies learn, and improve. Strategy is about learning - about learning how you serve people and deal with issues better.

Read full article: , October 12, 2011

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