“Nobody ever measured management properly.” Henry Mintzberg
Henry Mintzberg has spent a lifetime taking management myths out of sight for the sake of insight. The McGill professor and Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient joins Aidan McCullen to discuss his new book, Bust Those Management Myths, and explains why the effective strategies are learned as much as they are planned.
In this conversation, Henry Mintzberg reveals: • Why the flat earth theory works perfectly well for building runways in Holland • How the Egg McMuffin splits a class of managers down the middle on what strategy is • The bees and flies in a bottle, and why too many bees are making strategy • What Wayne Gretzky meant when he said he skates to where the puck is going to be • Why top and middle management are dangerous metaphors • Chains, hubs, webs and sets, explained through a wedding • Why MBA programmes graduate technocrats who measure like mad • The single disconnect behind eight of the book’s myths
Chapters 00:00 Strategy Position vs Perspective 01:49 Meet Henry Mintzberg 03:33 Myth Our Theory Is True 05:37 Updating Theories Over Time 07:20 Measurement Madness Myth 09:16 Strategy as Position and Perspective 11:15 Myth Strategies Are Planned 15:34 Intuition Experience and Bees 20:29 Myth Beyond Hierarchy 23:10 Chains Hubs Webs Sets 27:49 Management Art Craft Science 30:26 Targets Disconnect and Context 32:54 Left Brain Right Brain
Resources Bust Those Management Myths (Berrett-Koehler): https://bkconnection.com/products/9798890571724_bust-those-management-myths MythSite, the book’s companion site: https://mythsite.org Planning on the Left Side and Managing on the Right (HBR, 1976): https://hbr.org/1976/07/planning-on-the-left-side-and-managing-on-the-right Rebalancing Society: https://rebalancingsociety.org Henry’s website and blog: https://mintzberg.org
About Henry Mintzberg Henry Mintzberg holds the Cleghorn Chair of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal and is a recipient of the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award. Bust Those Management Myths is his twenty-second book. Others include The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Managers Not MBAs, Simply Managing and Rebalancing Society.
About the Host Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley). Learn more at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen
About The Innovation Show The Thinkers50-recognised podcast where square pegs find their place in a world of round holes. This series is brought to you by Kyndryl, who run and reimagine the technology systems that drive advantage for the world’s leading businesses. Learn more at https://www.kyndryl.com
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