Henry Mintzberg - Understanding Organizations...Finally

‘We live in a world of organizations - and we do not understand them’

This is one of the statements Henry Mintzberg, one of the leading thinkers in the field of Management, made when I interviewed him for my Leadership 2.0 Podcast about his latest book ‘Understanding Organizations…Finally'.

During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:

The importance for organizations to get their structure ‘right’How Henry’s thinking about organizations has evolved in the last 40 years, and what some of the changes and updates he made in this book as a resultHenry’s statement that ‘Every (organization) form contains the seeds of its own destruction.’ ‘Emergent structures’ as an alternative to large scale organization restructuring initiativesThe fit between the personality of a leader and the structure of the organizationThe link between the structures of Apple and Tesla, and the personalities of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. What, if anything, could ‘established’ organizations learn from this?The complimentary role of conflict and culture in organizationsThe relationship between structure and culture in organizationsWhere the gap between the formulators and implementers of corporate strategies stems from, and how this can be closedThe interest in structuring organizations in the academic and the business world

About Henry Mintzberg

Henry Mintzberg is the Cleghorn professor of management studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University in Montreal. He was visiting professor at INSEAD, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the London Business School. He has been engaged as a consultant to a number of organizations, and was president of the Strategic Management Society from 1988 to 1991.

He is the author of 21 books, including ‘The Nature of Managerial Work’, ‘Managers not MBAs’, ‘Simply Managing’, ‘Rebalancing Society, Managing the Myths of Health Care’, and ‘Understanding Organizations...Finally!’ (2023). He also wrote 184 articles, numerous commentaries and produced videos.

He publishes a regular TWOG (TWeet 2 blOG), on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Finally Henry co-founded, and remains active, in the International Masters Program for Managers and the International Masters for Health Leadership, as well as the venture CoachingOurselves.com.

Resources

Website Henry Mintzberg: https://mintzberg.org/
Twitter Account Henry Mintzberg: @mintzberg141
International Masters Program for Managers: impm.org
International Masters for Health Leadership: mcgill.ca/imhl

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