More About Henry Mintzberg
by Miki SaxonFriday I quoted Henry Mintzberg, the man Tom Peters called the world’s premier management thinker. I hope you clicked and read the short opinion piece in Business Week.
Here is a link to an interview in the Wall Street Journal that will give you more substance on his new book, Managing.
Mintzberg says that, “Basically, managing is about influencing action. … One step removed, they manage people. Managers deal with people who take the action… And two steps removed from that, managers manage information to drive people to take action… too much managing through information—what I call “deeming,” and says his four year old daughter can do that.
“The alternative is to give more attention to the people plane and the action plane. Even when you’re managing information, you can manage in a much more nuanced way than just shooting a bunch of figures around.”
You can check out more about Managing at Amazon. I just ordered my copy (it’s available now, not September) and I recommend that you do the same.
I honestly believe that this will be one of the most valuable business books to be published in a long time.
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Image credit: Amazon
August 24th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Sounds like an interesting read, will look into it, thanks for sharing:-)
X C
August 24th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Hi Chelsea, I hope you enjoy it; please come back and tell us what you think!
August 30th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I’d like to echo the comments related to managing people. As a management coach I say that knowing how to effectively manage the people in the process is the most essential. Why?…because it’s the motivation of the people that produces the results. Therefore, motivation is a human resource. The 2nd removed description is really a component of the first and contained in the communication aspect of managing people via the relationship.
August 30th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Hi JoAnn, you do know that managing is the fallback position for those who don’t make it as leaders. No? Gee, there are reams of books and blogs to explain that. (Please pardon the sarcasm:)
Thanks for stopping by and adding your valuable thoughts.