《Manager#39;s Job folklore and fact》.pdf

Article 3 The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact The classical view says that the manager organizes, coordinates, plans, and controls; the facts suggest otherwise. Henry Mintzberg Henry Mintzberg is the Bronfman Professor of Management at McGill Uni- question: What do managers do? Without a proper answer, how versity. His latest book is Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange can we teach management? How can we design planning or in- World of Organizations (Free Press, 1989). This article appeared originally formation systems for managers? How can we improve the prac- in HBR July–August 1975. It won the McKinsey Award for excellence. tice of management at all? Our ignorance of the nature of managerial work shows up in various ways in the modern organization—in boasts by successful managers who never spent a single day in a management training If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell program; in the turnover of corporate planners who never quite you that they plan, organize, coordinate, and control. Then watch understood what it was the manager wanted; in the computer what they do. Don’t be surprised if you can’t relate what you see consoles gathering dust in the back room because the managers to these words. never used the fancy on-line MIS some analyst thought they needed. Perhaps most important, our ignorance shows up in the When a manager is told that a factory has just burned down