Henry Mintzberg Quotes

Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense

The original and brilliant idea of an MBA was the opportunity for students to study the theory and application of business and management principles.

Most regular, two-year MBA programs provide both experience and the capacity to link together the essential elements of management such as finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and operations.

Our managers need to have a strong integration of managerial skills and technical understanding. One cannot substitute for the other.

Jesus was a management expert too.

Specialized management courses are useful but should come well after the complexity of management and business are understood.

A woman with organizing skills can run a construction company without ever picking up a hammer and nail.

To operate a company of the size of Sears Holdings or Wal-Mart or Target or Home Depot or Lowe's, you need a combination of skills, and each of those skills needs to be sufficiently strong.

I think if you want to be a successful president or a manager of a team, you need to understand what the business is all about because you have to deal with the business side of the game to be able to do what you need to do.

It was Labor Day weekend in 1983, and Dad hired me to run Mick's Lounge, a bar he co-owned, for $200 a week. The business was nearly bankrupt. But I said, 'Dad, I can fix it.' It was the most natural thing I'd ever done. It just made sense to me.

As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation.

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.

I always knew that I wanted to do something in business and I prepared myself for that.

Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.

You're not going to become a great manager overnight. You're not going to become a great public speaker or figure out how to raise money. These are the things you want to start the clock on as early as possible.

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

Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O.

If I look myself as a manager, I have lot more to learn.

A CEO needs to build their own team.

I'm not real good at the administrative part of running a company.

It helps to have founded and run a company if you're going to help somebody run a company who is a founder.

Look, you need technical skills to run a company.

If you're running an engineering or finance company, all companies depend on ideas and ingenuity. I think the principles of creative leadership apply everywhere, whether it's an advertising company or whether you're running a hospital.

My last two years of high school, I did work-study half the day, and I ran the restaurant. It was just this little restaurant, but it was just so cool. I had 35, 40 employees.

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