Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/PIGSun1au6M
Management myths disconnect leaders from the work they are supposed to manage, and Henry Mintzberg has spent a lifetime busting them. The McGill professor, a friend of the show, returns to discuss his new book, Bust Those Management Myths. He calls it a collection of corrections, drawn from decades of books, articles and blogs, and he still writes every single morning.
Aidan and Henry work through as many of the book’s ten myths as one conversation allows. They start with the mother of them all.
The mother of all management myths
The myth says our own theory is true. Henry’s correction is that no theory is true, because theory lives in words and numbers on paper while reality lives outside the window. Every theory simplifies.
The flat earth theory does a perfectly good job when you build runways in Holland, because nobody adds a millimetre to correct for curvature. Sailors and pilots need the round earth theory instead. Yet the earth is neither, since it bulges slightly at the equator. Henry warns that once we treat a theory as true, it hardens into dogma and we stop thinking.
He borrows Peter Drucker’s phrase, the theory of the business. IKEA began with flat pack retailing as a fairly general idea. As competitors caught up, it had to keep nuancing that theory. Aidan adds a line from Henry’s late McGill colleague Donald Hebb, that a good theory holds together long enough to get you to a better one.
The book offers a costly example of theory turned dogma. The economic belief that greed is good, markets are sufficient and governments are suspect once brought great wealth, and Henry argues it now damages our societies. He makes that case at length in Rebalancing Society.
Strategy as position and perspective
Henry draws strategy two ways. Position points down to the X on the map, the market you serve. Perspective looks up, towards the worldview and philosophy of the organisation. Michael Porter, Henry argues, has always treated strategy as position. Drucker’s theory of the business sits closer to perspective.
The Egg McMuffin settles arguments in his classroom. When McDonald’s launched it to capture breakfast, was that a strategic change? Half the managers say yes, new product and new market. The other half say it was the same old thing. Henry tells them both halves are right, because McDonald’s took a new position inside an old perspective.
Why the best strategies are learned
The myth holds that proper strategies are planned. Henry counters that interesting strategies are learned. Sometimes we think first, sometimes we see first and sometimes we act in order to think.
In 1987 Michael Porter told The Economist, “I favor a set of analytical techniques for developing strategy.” Henry calls that a grand fallacy. Techniques develop nothing. People develop strategy when they synthesise beyond the analysis.
The next myth, Myth 9 in the book, says we should think in order to act. Finding a partner shows the alternative. Nobody lists every candidate, scores them against criteria and adds up the totals, since the lucky person has married someone else by then. Henry’s father met his mother in New York and phoned his own mother that day to say he had met the woman he would marry. That is seeing in order to act. When seeing fails, we try something. If it works we do more of it, and a strategy emerges.
Bees, flies and Wayne Gretzky
Intuition grows out of experience, and Henry admits he has no intuition about landing on the moon. Wayne Gretzky said he skates to where the puck is going to be. Henry points out that Gretzky did not say where he thinks it will be.
Glass is another matter. Put bees and flies into a bottle with its base against a window. The bees head for the light and batter themselves against the glass, because they have never met glass before. The flies wander every which way and escape through the open neck within minutes. Henry’s moral is that too many bees are making strategy and too few flies. He first met the story, told by Gordon Siu, in Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence.
Aidan offers a former rugby player’s view. Stade Toulousain look as though they play off the cuff, and they rehearse for years to make it look that way.
Beyond tops, middles and bottoms
Henry calls top and middle management dangerous metaphors. Nobody dares to say bottom management, and sitting on top of the pay scale hardly puts you on top of what is going on. He adds slabs to the familiar silos. Silos keep departments apart vertically. Slabs keep people apart horizontally, most of all when every chief officer sits on one floor talking only to each other. Apple went the other way with a flat building, where people will walk a mile across but avoid climbing a floor.
A wedding gives him four ways to organise. The buffet queue is a chain. Each table is a hub, much like a hospital where doctors, nurses and food come to the patient. The dance floor is a web, the shape of a research lab. Sets leave everyone apart, as in baseball.
If you can’t measure it, can you manage it?
Henry has no time for the slogan. He defies anyone to measure what a child learns in a classroom, and he notes that nobody has measured the effect of a manager, let alone the effect of measurement. Targets bring their own trap. One manager misses the numbers in a terrible market and deserves praise. Another glides past them in a booming market and should have done twice as well.
Henry describes management as a meeting of art, craft and science, with craft at the centre. Business schools cannot teach craft to students who lack managerial experience, so they teach analysis and graduate technocrats who measure like mad. Looking back across the book, Henry finds eight of the myths share one root, a disconnect between management and the thing being managed.
Planning on the left side, managing on the right
Aidan closes by resurfacing an article Henry wrote for Harvard Business Review in 1976, Planning on the Left Side and Managing on the Right. Robert Ornstein’s The Psychology of Consciousness had described what split-brain research revealed about each hemisphere. Henry saw the managing he watched in practice as right-hemispheric and the management in the textbooks as analytic and left-hemispheric. He suspects the idea has faded from view, and both men would like it back.
The book’s companion site, MythSite.org, carries further Insights that Henry describes as a sort of second book. Read his blog at mintzberg.org, and order Bust Those Management Myths from Berrett-Koehler.
About the Guest
Henry Mintzberg holds the Cleghorn Chair of Management Studies in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal and is a recipient of the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award. Bust Those Management Myths (Berrett-Koehler, 2026) is his twenty-second book. Others include The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Managers Not MBAs, Simply Managing and Rebalancing Society. He writes every morning and shares his work at mintzberg.org.
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 about Aidan.
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Frequently asked questions
What are the ten myths in Bust Those Management Myths?
Henry Mintzberg busts ten beliefs. Lofty leadership tops management. Organisations have tops, middles and bottoms. There is one best way to organise. Management relies on analysis. MBA education prepares managers. Managers control. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Strategies are planned. Decisions mean thinking first. And our theory is true, the mother of all myths.
What is the difference between strategy as position and strategy as perspective?
Mintzberg says position looks down at the market a company serves, while perspective looks up at its worldview. When McDonald’s launched the Egg McMuffin, it took a new position within an old perspective. He argues Michael Porter treats strategy as position, while Peter Drucker’s theory of the business is closer to perspective.
Are strategies planned or do they emerge?
Mintzberg argues interesting strategies are learned. Leaders sometimes think first, sometimes see first and sometimes act in order to think. They try something, do more of what works and less of what fails, and a strategy emerges through trial and error. He calls Porter’s 1987 preference for analytical techniques a fallacy, because people develop strategy through synthesis.
Is it true that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it?
Henry Mintzberg calls the slogan a myth. Nobody has properly measured the effect of a manager, or the effect of measurement itself, and much real learning resists measurement. Measuring helps an organisation keep on track, but over-measuring can destroy the work it was meant to improve.
What are chains, hubs, webs and sets?
They are Mintzberg’s four ways of organising, which he illustrates with a wedding. The buffet queue is a linear chain. Each table is a hub where people gather, much like a hospital. The dance floor is a web of interaction, like a research lab. Sets leave people working apart, as in baseball.
Who is a keynote speaker on strategy, innovation and change in Ireland?
Aidan McCullen is a Dublin-based keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change. He is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, host of The Innovation Show and author of Undisruptable. He works with organisations across Ireland and internationally on strategy, transformation and reinvention.