The manager’s job: Folklore and facts
By Henri MINTZBERG
HBR March/April 1990
1. Folklore and facts
a. Folklore: the manager is a reflective, systematic planner. Facts: managers work at an unrelenting pace with activities characterized by brevity, variety and discontinuity. They are strongly oriented to actions and dislike reflective activities. They encourage the flow of current information.
b. Folklore: the effective manager has no regular duties to perform. Facts: managerial work involves performing a number of regular duties, including ritual and ceremony, negotiations and processing of soft information that links the organization with its environment.
c. Folklore: the senior manager needs aggregated information which a formal MIS best provides. Facts: MIS systems are not working, managers are not using them. They strongly favor verbal media (80% of working time), phone calls, meetings over documents. Mgrs identify problems and opportunities and build mental models with specific tidbits of data, tangible details. To help himself, the manager must reach out as widely as he can for every scrap of fact, opinion, gossip bearing on his interests and relationships.
d. Folklore: Mgt is a science and a profession. Facts: mgrs’ programs ? to schedule time, process information, make decisions…- remain locked deep inside their brains (judgment, intuition…).
2. Basic description of managerial work: The manager’s roles
| |Formal authority & status | |
|Setting target for the future, |Planning & budgeting: setting targets, establishing |Setting a direction, developing a vision for the ...