Richard Straub, who runs the Drucker Forum, tweeted recently about my forthcoming book Bedtime Stories for Managers: “Good to know—maybe one or two preview chapters for the Drucker Forum at the end of the month?” So here is one, related to my contribution on “Leading Smarter Organizations.” Say organization and we see leadership. That’s why those charts are so ubiquitous. They show us who sits on top of whom, but not who talks with whom, when, and about what. Why are we so fixated on formal authority? Is there no more to organizing than bossing? Have a look at Figure 1 to see an Organization. Then look at Figure 2 to see a Re-organization. Figure 1: This is […]

CO-AUTHORED WITH FREDERICK BIRD In the sixteenth century, there were calls for reforms of the Christian Church, which was then the largest, wealthiest, and most global institution in the world. Some critics engaged in protests, others offered advice or called for a gathering of leaders. But what eventually sparked action was a poster nailed to the door of the All Saints Church, Wittenberg, in the fall of 1517, by Martin Luther, a monk and professor. He posted 95 theses about fundamental issues to be addressed. Thus began the Reformation. Photo credit: Martin Luther [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons At a meeting last November at the Drucker Forum in Vienna, Charles Handy called for a reformation of […]

Imagine managing cheese products in India for a global food company, or running a general hospital in Montreal under the Quebec Medicare system. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Now imagine that you have sold so much cheese in India that the company asks you to manage cheese for all of Asia. Or in Montreal, you did so well in the hospital that the government asks you to manage a community clinic too—to go back and forth between the two, or stay in an office somewhere and shoot off emails. When reorganizing health care services in Quebec, in one region the government actually went nine times worse: it designated one managerial position for nine different institutions: a […]

(See lisamintzberg.com for more of her photography.)   I address this especially to business executives, but as citizens of their societies and neighbors in their communities.   Why do we focus on the conditions of our problems instead of addressing their root causes? Medicine, for example, gives far greater attention to treating diseases than to preventing what caused them in the first place. Jonas Salk provided a telling exception: instead of treating polio, he created a vaccine to eradicate it.   0.0, 1.0, 2.0    Much the same can be said about corporate social responsibility, or CSR. A corporation is considered responsible when it attends to the evident conditions of some social or environmental problem. But […]

The company has a new chief, with 100 days to show the stock market some quick wins. Not the usual wins: transformation is the game. Hurry up and reinvent the whole company. But where to begin? That’s easy: at the “top”. Where else when there’s such pressure. Besides, any chief who has been to a business school or reads the business press knows that it’s all about leadership: the boss who does the thinking that drives everyone else. Louis XIV said “L’état, c’est moi!” Today’s corporate CEO says “The enterprise, that’s me!” John Kotter has written the widespread word on transformation, at the Harvard Business School, where so many of the cases are about the chief.  Here is […]

Remember judgment? It still appears in the dictionary (in my Oxford: “1 the critical faculty, discernment… 2 good sense”). Judgment used to be a key to managing effectively, even if hidden in the dark recesses of the human brain. And then along came measurement, in the dazzling light. It was a good idea, so long as it informed judgment. Too frequently, however, it replaced judgement.   In 1981, the Business Roundtable, a grouping of the chief executives of America’s leading companies, issued their “Statement on Corporate Responsibility.”   The shareholder must receive a good return but the legitimate concerns of other constituencies (customers, employees, communities, suppliers and society at large) also must have the appropriate […]

If you want to understand the difference between a network and a community, ask your Facebook friends to help paint your house.   Social media certainly connects us to whoever is on the other end of the line, and so extends our social networks in amazing ways. But this can come at the expense of deeper personal relationships. When it feels like we’re up-to-date on our friends’ lives through Facebook or Instagram, we may become less likely to call them, much less meet up. Networks connect; communities care.   Marshall McLuhan wrote famously about the “global village,” created by new information technologies. But what kind of a village is this? In the traditional village, you chatted with your neighbor at […]