Henry Mintzberg - Bedtime Stories for Managers

Bedtime Stories

for Managers

Other Books by Henry Mintzberg

Management: Its not what you think

Managing

Tracking Strategies

The Flying Circus

Strategy Bites Back

Managers not MBAs

The Strategy Process

Managing Publicly

Strategy Safari

The Canadian Condition

The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning

Mintzberg on Management

Structure in Fives

Power In and Around Organizations

The Structuring of Organizations

The Nature of Managerial Work

Bedtime Stories for Managers

Copyright 2019 by Henry Mintzberg

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Ordering information for print editions

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-9878-1
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9879-8
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9880-4
Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-9882-8

2018-1

Book producer and text designer: BookMatters; copyeditor: Elizabeth von Radics; proofreader: Janet Reed Blake; indexer: Leonard Rosenbaum; cover designer: Dan Tesser/Studio Carnelian

Offline? Excellent. Welcome to Bedtime Stories for Managers, a playful book with a serious message: management has to come down from lofty leadership to grounded engagement. How so? By organizing like a cow instead of a chart so that strategies can grow like weeds in a garden as extraordinary ideas come from ordinary people who are distinctively worldly instead of cookie-cutter global.

The first story sets the tone, telling how the CEO of a failing airline sat in First Class while his customers in back had to eat what was called scrambled eggs. In a world as scrambled as ours, managers have to eat those eggs.

A few years ago, I began a blog (mintzberg.org/blog) to capture a lifetime of ideas buried in obscure publications. Then I came across a book of stories for the fans of the Montreal hockey team, 101 in all. Perfect bedtime reading!a little story or two before dozing off. Why not a book of blogs for managers? What better time than now, by which I mean bedtime, after the managing has stoppedif it ever does.

Consider the organizations that you know and admire most:

Do they function as collections of Human Resources or as communities of human beings?

Does thinking always come first, or do they sometimes see first or do first in order to think better?

Do they measure like mad or serve with soul?

Must they be the best, or do they do their best?

If you opted for the first set of answers, read this book to discover the second. If you opted for the second set of answers, read this book to cope with those who opted for the first.

From more than 101 blogs, I selected 42 that seem to speak most meaningfully to managers. Books, I am told, need chapters, so I organized these under headings like managing, organizing, analyzing, and so on. I am also told that chapters need introductions to tell you what the writer is going to tell you. Here I drew the line: no introductions. I prefer that you discover these stories for yourself, in whatever order you prefer. I do ask that you read the first story first and the last story last, but otherwise feel free to peruse at randomas good managers sometimes do.

As you turn the pages, Id like you to wonder what in the world is coming next. Ill give you a hint: a medley of metaphors. Beside cows and gardens, cutting cookies and scrambling eggs, get ready for the maestro myth of managing, the soft underbelly of hard data, the board as bee, and downsizing as bloodletting. Just try not to be outraged by anything you read because some of my most outrageous ideas turn out to be my best. They just take time to become obvious.

This may be a book about managing, but dont expect any magic bullets. I leave those to the books that compound the problem. Instead expect unexpected insights to sleep on so that you can rise and shine and, after eating some properly scrambled eggs, charge out to unscramble the messes of managing. You, your colleagues, even your family might just live a little more happily ever after.

Sweet dreams!

I profess management and more at McGill University in Montreal (in the Cleghorn Chair of the Desautels Faculty), where I help managers develop themselves in business (impm.org), in health care (imhl.org), and in-house (CoachingOurselves.com). Otherwise I escape the world of organizations on skates, atop a bicycle, up mountains, and in my cherished canoe.

I guess I should tell you that I have 20 honorary degrees and am an Officer of the Order of Canada. (You can find other extraneous details at mintzberg.org, including /beaver to see my collection of proper art, /books to see all mine, including a collection of horror stories about The Flying Circus, and /blog for new stories like the ones in this book.) I can add that this is my twentieth bookmaybe the most seriousand my sixth with Berrett-Koehler. The focus of my attention now, hopefully before its too late, is to help wake up the world to the implications of one of these books, called Rebalancing Society.

In my cherished canoe, with one of my cherished daughters

Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Berrett-Koehler, Katie urged me to do a blog, so I eventually did. Then Jeevan urged me to do a collection of my ideas, and thus came this book. Katie, again to the rescue, with Kristen suggested that we call it