Leadership, Management, Mintzberg, and Sensibility

"Good management and leadership. . . cannot be separated. Does anyone want to work for a manager who lacks the qualities of leadership?  Well, how about a leader that doesn't practise management?"

Henry Mintzberg from the October 23rd Financial Times in London.

Are you as relieved to see that as I am? The Leadership/Management debate has always struck me as a forced issue prompted by a desire for intellectual jousting and cocktail talk. It's done little, if anything, to help managers do what they need to do. If you're a manager you know what I mean. How much you strategize depends on your level in the organization. But you deal with strategy no matter where you are. Supervisors talk about visions of doing things better. Everyone needs to be managing performance. The mix depends only on where you are in the org chart.

The article is really worth reading and is actually a bit deceptive. It's title, Scourge of business schools slams 'leadership teaching' is deceptive. Mintzberg, long time professor at McGill University in Montreal, is all about management development. His position on how to do it differs from what has become accepted practice in the U.S. and parts of Western Europe.

In Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development, Mintzberg notes that tradtional MBA programs focus on the functions of management. What that really means is that students learn about marketing, finance, operations, etc. However, they falsely believe that they've been trained as managers.

I like what Mintzberg suggests--and practices--at McGill. He realizes that management isn't taught in a classroom absent on-the-job experience. There's just no context or shared experiences for learning. He'd like to see people work as managers before attending MBA style programs. Once they start,  extend the program over a period of time so the learnings grow with the managers' growing challenges and experience.

If real-life management development interests you, here is a link to a high-quality video of Mintzberg speaking at MIT on Managers Not MBAs. It should be required viewing for anyone concerned with real  management development.