Henry Mintzberg Quotes

Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet

A C.E.O.'s job is leadership, problem solving, and team building. I've done that my whole career.

A CEO needs to build their own team.

When I was getting my education, I fell in love with the writings of Peter Drucker. He was my hero. I had a naive belief that when I became a manager, it was going to be like Peter Drucker's books. That is, I was going to be the effective executive. I was going to talk to people about their goals. I was going to help them actualize.

I need to aspire to be a great CEO and not just a great product engineer.

Clearly in my mind, I have two distinct positions - owner and manager. So I am open to reviewing my performance as a manager as any other person in Sun Pharma.

I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.

Clearly, as a CEO, you have other functions that are managed by other people.

You learn every single day when you're running a company. You learn as you go.

Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O.

Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It's something you have to learn. It's a very lonely job.

If I spend all of my day in the details as a CEO of a company like Wal-Mart, I think it would be trouble, because I wouldn't really be prepared to speak to the big issues that the country or the world should face.

Being a consultant is like flying first-class. The food is terrific, the drinks are cold. But all you can do is walk up to the pilot and say, 'bank left.' If you're in management, you have the controls.

Clearly, every company needs a leader. That's an important part of being the CEO of the company.

[Describing her role:] It's like running a big corporation and a little country at the same time.

Leadership involves risk-taking.

The Secret Service today is awash in managers, not leaders.

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

Drive your business. Let not your business drive you.

Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same.

In the study of management, unfortunately, many writers have been so anxious to articulate a theory in the form of, "If you do this, this will result," that they never go through this careful effort.

The most important figures for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.

One of the best bits of advice I can give is, early on, when you're building a new business, try to find somebody to run it on a day-to-day basis to free yourself up to look at the bigger picture.

I'm slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can't motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles.