Dr. Henry Mintzberg is a name known to many. He’s a writer and educator - most of his work focuses on managing originations, developing managers, and rebalancing societies (which is where his attention is currently focused).
After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal (1961), working in Operational Research for the Canadian National Railways (1961-1963), and doing his masters and Ph.D. at the MIT Sloan School of Management (1965 and 1968), He made his professional home at McGill. He’s had extensive visiting professorships at INSEAD in France and the London Business School in England.
He's authored 20 books, including Managers not MBAs, Simply Managing, Rebalancing Society, and Managing the Myths of Health Care. He also authored 180 articles plus numerous commentaries and videos.
He publishes a regular TWOG (TWeet 2 blOG), as “provocative fun in a page or 2 beyond pithy pronouncements in a line or 2” (@mintzberg141 to mintzberg.org/blog).
A collection has recently been published under the title Bedtime Stories for Managers, and following that will be Understanding Organizations...Finally (a revision of his book Structure in Fives).
He’s also an outdoorsman and collector of beaver sculptures.
A Few Quotes From This Episode
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Dr. Henry Mintzberg is a name known to many. He’s a writer and educator - most of his work focuses on managing originations, developing managers, and rebalancing societies (which is where his attention is currently focused).
After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal (1961), working in Operational Research for the Canadian National Railways (1961-1963), and doing his masters and Ph.D. at the MIT Sloan School of Management (1965 and 1968), He made his professional home at McGill. He’s had extensive visiting professorships at INSEAD in France and the London Business School in England.
He's authored 20 books, including Managers not MBAs, Simply Managing, Rebalancing Society, and Managing the Myths of Health Care. He also authored 180 articles plus numerous commentaries and videos.
He publishes a regular TWOG (TWeet 2 blOG), as “provocative fun in a page or 2 beyond pithy pronouncements in a line or 2” (@mintzberg141 to mintzberg.org/blog).
A collection has recently been published under the title Bedtime Stories for Managers, and following that will be Understanding Organizations...Finally (a revision of his book Structure in Fives).
He’s also an outdoorsman and collector of beaver sculptures.
A Few Quotes From This Episode
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay, good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to the phronesis podcast. And today, I have Dr. Henry Mintzberg and a name that is known to many. He's a writer. He's an educator. Most of his work focuses on managing organizations, developing managers, and most currently rebalancing societies. And that's really where a lot of our conversation is going to focus today. But a little more on Henry, after receiving his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from McGill in Montreal, and working in operational research for the Canadian National Railways. He did his Master's and Ph.D. at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He made his professional home at McGill, and he's had extensive visiting professorships at INSEAD in France and the London Business School in England. He's authored 20 books, including managers, not MBAs, simply managing rebalancing society, and managing the myths of healthcare. He has also authored 180 articles, plus numerous commentaries and videos, he publishes a regular swag, this was a new term for me TWOG, which means "tweet to blog" you know, I'm going to put all of the information to how to access Henry on Twitter, and his blog in the show notes. So you'll have all of that information. A collection has recently been published under the name bedtime stories for managers. And following that we'll be understanding organizations dot dot dot, finally a revision of his book structure in fives now this was the most fun fact that I discovered on your, on your website, is that you collect beaver sculptures. And I loved your description, "a very open-minded museum someday may house all of your beaver sculptures." That is wonderful.
Henry Mintzberg 1:58
You know, the MoMA Museum of Modern Art in New York has always featured mammals as artists. So why not beavers? after all? They're different from driftwood in the sense that they've worked. And they can be quite spectacular. And they're on my website. Most of them I picked out of the water. Virtually all of them I picked out of the water myself. A couple, two, or three were given by friends, I probably got a 50 that are showable. Oh, that's wonderful. And they're all over the house. And the funny part is they're placed in such a way that nobody comes in and says, What are all these things? No, most people don't even notice. Here and there.
Scott Allen 2:41
That's wonderful. That's absolutely wonderful, what my family loves the outdoors. So that collection resonates with me for sure. Anytime that we can be out in nature is a good day for the Allen family. along some of that vein, a lot of where we're going to spend some of our time today is really this whole notion of rebalancing society. Because in many ways, you've come to the conclusion that we are out of balance. And in fact, we've been out of balance, at least a number of countries have been out of balance for some time now. And on your website. And in the section about rebalancing society, you have these seven basic points. And I think the structure I want to use today is just to bring listeners into your thinking, I'm going to read a statement that you have on the site. And then I would just love for you to talk to that to speak to that. And I think the first one is to balance a healthy society balances a public sector that is respected with a private sector that is responsible and a plural sector that is robust.
Henry Mintzberg 3:53
Yeah, you know, you can go all over the world and find countries that violate this in one way or another, the communist countries were completely out of balance on the size of government. The government was strong, I don't know respected as the right word. But the business was weak, and communities, what I call a plural sector, public, private plural. The community sector is very weak to this day China can tolerate community groups, whether their ethnic or religious or political or social or anything. So and then you can go around the world and you know, the populous countries now like Hungary or Venezuela, interestingly, Hungary on the right and Venezuela on the left, but what's the difference, are totally out of balance. On the side of populism on the side of communities, basically, they represent communities, the liberal democracies, particularly the US and the UK. I personally think we are way out of balance on the side of business from the other side of the private sector, you know, the declaration of independence of the United States, the whole purpose of it was to make sure government didn't come back weigh the King of England, and dominate the society. So they weaken the government by dividing power between the three branches. And that left the door open for businesses that could run. And now, it's kind of gone off the deep end because of essentially, the Citizens United opening up the doors to political donations. It's kind of legalized bribery. And then so you have the communist countries out of whack on the side of government, and you have the liberal democracies out of whack on the side of business, and then you got the populous countries out of whack on the side of the political sector communities.
Scott Allen 5:38
Yeah. And so those are some of those different forms of imbalance that you talked about. And then you also talk about this imbalance today, you know, the belief that capitalism has triumphed, and that was in 1989, throwing many countries, especially the liberal democracies of the west out of balance ever since, on the side, like you said, of the private sector interests. Can you think of any other examples where you have a context other than maybe China or Russia that are experiencing some of those imbalances?
Henry Mintzberg 6:11
Well, let's talk about the other side of that. The Economist does an index every year of democracies, and they rate them very carefully into both democracies, I think they call it flawed democracies, hydro hybrids, regimes, and autocratic regimes. There are 23 countries that are now full democracies. With a couple of exceptions, I think most of those are models of balance, particularly the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, all of them, New Zealand, Canada's number five, which first big, middle-sized country, most of them are tiny. So if you look for balance, you'll find that there Germany is quite balanced. I think. Japan is the biggest of those countries that are on the list of all democracies, which means that the 10 biggest countries in the world are not rated. As for democracies, the US, for example, is called a flawed democracy, I guess because of the role of money in politics and so on. But you can go around the world, of course, we're not even mentioning developing countries where, where there's an autocrat, or a king or something completely dominating the country, totally out of balance in favor of whatever that person chooses to support. You could say they don't put it this way. But you could say that the economist is claiming that about 175 countries in the world are not balanced in all kinds of ways.
Scott Allen 7:40
And I think, at least in the context of the United States, your opinion would be that it used to be much more balanced. Would you agree with that statement,
Henry Mintzberg 7:50
After World War II, just look at the period, for example, when Lyndon Johnson was president, and then he was a lot less popular than Ronald Reagan. But Johnson, look at the welfare programs during the 670s, the welfare programs were hugely generous look at the tax rates in the United States, they were high, people paid a hell of a lot of tax. Look at those situations now. So the US was much closer to balance and the plural sector, the community sector, Americans are the greatest organizers on Earth. I mean, Americans will organize everything, they're amazing. I should say I'm Canadian, just to make it clear. So we're the great observers of the United States. And deTocqueville use the word associations when he wrote about democracy in America in the 1830s. And he used the word associations and said that American democracy was critically dependent on these associations that were neither business nor government. Now, fingers have swung so far towards business, even the NGOs in the US a lot of them act like business, even though they're not technically, business. So the US has swung seriously or about Jefferson wrote a letter in 1816 saying that that business is going to take over the country if we're not careful.. But I think it's fair to say business is much much to reflect I love business, I love my car, I love restaurants I, I love business but zoom all that in his place, which is the marketplace, not in the political space.
Scott Allen 9:33
In one portion of this page on the website, you talk about the balancing to face threats, and that the major threats that we face today, warming weapons, lopsided distribution of wealth, that a country that is achieving greater levels of this balance, will probably be better prepared to face those threats. So even if we go back to let's say the Scandinavian countries, it would seem that even just as that one case study on, say, the topic of global warming, that they've attacked, and they've approached those topics in a much more balanced way than maybe some other countries around the world, that would be out of balance, right.
Henry Mintzberg 10:20
But look at COP26, the recent meeting on environment, which I call COPOUT 26, because they caught the 26th time, there were 300 lobbyists from the energy sector alone. And a number of those were actually part of delegations, including the Canadian delegation. So Canada gave a seat at the table to the energy companies that were there for one reason alone, they would claim another reason, which is we want to make sure that what you do is doable, of course, but it wasn't coincidental that they were there to make sure that nothing damages their markets, there were three those 300 people I've numbered any national delegation, I maintain, we will get nowhere with climate change, nowhere with climate change until we rebound society. In other words, if you want to put your attention on climate change, put your attention into rebalancing society. Because until there's the rebalance, we will never get anywhere with climate change anywhere really serious. In climate change. We have four-year governments making 20, 30, 40-year plans. I mean, give me a break. You know, Obama comes in and makes a climate plan, and Trump comes in throws it in the garbage and bond comes back and puts it in and somebody else will throw it in the garbage. It's about action. It's not about planning. Another thing about balance, if you work for McDonald's, in Copenhagen, you're making $25 An hour and others, you can live a decent life, the price of that, if you compare a Big Mac in Copenhagen with a Big Mac in New York, it's about $1 difference from what I gather. So it's a small price to pay for democracy. If you live in McDonald's, you can barely work at Walmart, or whatever it is, Amazon, you can barely make ends meet in Scandinavia, they make sure that people are paid properly.
Scott Allen 12:11
Well, let's talk about the leadership challenge, how that balance is restored. Because as you know, there's whole systems and infrastructure in place now that care deeply they are invested in keeping things the way they are. So how do we begin to think about shifting the balance to get somewhere new so that we're better prepared to tackle some of these challenges around weapons or climate, any number of different societal woes that we're experiencing in the United States, a smaller middle class that used to be very much the backbone of our country's success is shrinking, it's decreasing is getting smaller. And of course, that throws things off as well. How do we shift it?
Henry Mintzberg 12:58
You know, people think it's about leadership, you know, we just have to let the right person and they'll magically bring this in. But I think Franklin Delano Roosevelt had it better. When a black activist asked him to support his cause. Roosevelt said, I know I, I believe in it, I support it, go out and make me do it. And therein lies the issue. It's the people on the ground who are going to make the leaders do it, the leaders will not do it. Some businesses are responsible, and other businesses are irresponsible, but business has to attend to business. And government can only attend to issues if it's got the support of the population. So these things start on the ground. And the model I use is the Reformation. Because Luther was a nobody was a monk, he was a monk who did a piece of paper and put it on a church and change the Christian world. Do you know why in the terms we use today? He used he didn't, but they use the new social medium to go viral. What do I mean, the printing press was the new social medium. His students took those 95 Theses on that sheet of paper, printed them up, and spread them around the villages. And it went viral. And it went viral because people were fed up with the corruption and it changed the whole Protestant world or Catholic world. It's action on the ground that forces or encourages or pushes leadership to move.
Scott Allen 14:31
And what's interesting, and the puzzle that I keep going back to Henry I just struggled to really make sense of this in a society wherein part, we are fueling the division we are fueling by either what we click on because the big tech is then making more money. The algorithm is elevating the story even further. So more people click. We are consuming our way into this divisiveness into this fear into this anger, this frustration, and whether it's Kim Kardashian, we're clicking and making her a billionaire or Housewives of New York, we're watching or divisive media we're consuming and when the boots on the ground are fueling the divisiveness. So it's a fascinating puzzle. I mean, it really is. How do you shift that? How do you shift that whole monetary system? So that people are clicking on different stories, different media, different approaches? I find it fascinating.
Henry Mintzberg 15:42
Well, you know, people, people are scared enough. If you want another model of how do you change society? Use COVID. Now, if you're interviewing me in 2019, and I said, You know what, Scott, I think we're gonna lock everybody in their houses for a few months and close down. They will lock me up. Yes, so we were scared enough that we did it. And of course, if you look at the numbers, too, because you know, we've got this famous truckers thing going on in Canada. Now. If you look at proportions, the Canadian, Sarah, Canadians are about 80% Double vaccinated. Trackers are 90% vaccinated trackers are nine, and it's 10% of those. It's among the 10% who are causing all this fuss so that people are prepared to do the pretty radical thing that I don't go around looking for vaccinations that stick in my arm, believe me, that's not my idea. Have a good time. Yes, okay. But the evidence is pretty clear. So we get vaccinated, we were scared enough and pushed to the wall enough, and so on that, we did things we would never dream of doing? Well, if the icebergs are melting in Antarctica, I think that's a terrible shame. But you know, I still have my ice cubes in my fridge, if I'm having a drink or whatever, you know, it's no skin off my teeth in a way or back or whatever the heck is this the expression so, you know, the people in, in New Jersey, who were hit with floods are the people in the Midwest of the US who were hit with floods, or in Japan or wherever they, they get it, they get it. So we're gonna have to wait till so many people have their lives or their houses or their livelihoods destroyed before we wake up, you know, fixing this is far less radical than then dealing with COVID. I mean, we had to go to real extremes for COVID. Fixing this is kind of a bit like, you're saying, do we need all this consumption, My life isn't going to get horrible. If I don't consume as much, you know, if I don't get a new iPhone or a new car, my life isn't gonna suffer. And our economies don't have to suffer if we shift from production goods to services. So we can spend more on entertainment instead of things we can spend more on health care, or we can, you know, educate our kids better. Finland probably has the best public school system in the world, they pay their teachers substantially. Well, that's a good way to use our money.
Scott Allen 18:22
Yes.
Henry Mintzberg 18:25
And keep the economy going. You know, we don't have to all produce more and more goods and load up more and more plastics all the time.
Scott Allen 18:33
Talk about this declaration of our interdependence, I find this really intriguing. Would you share with listeners a little bit about that?
Henry Mintzberg 18:42
In this house where I'm sitting now, which is about an hour outside of Montreal, I held a retreat with a number of people to brainstorm about rebalancing society. And one of the guys their American guy kept saying, We got to look at the Declaration of Independence, we've got to look at the Declaration of Independence, but we had agendas, and we were looking at other things. So a couple of us also another American guy, and I was driving home in the car, he was in the back and I was driving. And he opened his iPhone, and he started reading the clauses of the Declaration of Independence. And we started to paraphrase some parts of that. My favorite part is we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are created dependent. dependent on each other, our Earth, and its climate. So the Declaration of Independence was a brilliant document for its age, but it emphasized individual rights. And we need to balance as we talked about before, individual with collective and community rights. We need more of a balance so I'm all I'm as individualistic as people get are to some extent anyway. I don't want to do without my individual needs, but We have collective needs, we need the police force. We need a government that's respected. You know, if we don't have respected governments, we're in trouble. And that's what's going on in the US.
Scott Allen 20:10
Well, if the system is not yielding candidates who are willing to work with one another, willing to collaborate, willing to put the problem at the center versus my politics, it's it hurts everyone. It absolutely hurts and damages everyone. Because there's no progress. There's absolutely no progress.
Henry Mintzberg 20:32
These truckers in Ottawa, are marching with placards saying, we want to be free, we want our freedom. I demand my freedom. And they're demanding their freedom by denying the freedom to the citizens of Anwar, who were up all night with the horns blaring who can't get to their stores, or their work or their livelihood, many of them because the truckers are demanding their freedom, well, should they have their freedom as at the expense of the citizens of Ottawa is freedom. Freedom is not an absolute thing. Freedom is balanced in a communal way. And in a collective way.
Scott Allen 21:09
As you think about even kind of reflecting on this work, Henry? What are some contemporary thoughts that have kind of come to mind for you? Any, right this moment kind of thinking as you continue to reflect on this, this challenge of balance that comes to mind?
Henry Mintzberg 21:25
Well, you know, Scott comes back to your earlier question about what drives things and so on. And the question I keep asking myself is what's dumbing us down? What is dumbing so many people down and I'm not referring to people who don't vote the way I like to vote. I'm referring to some of the stalwarts of America. Like, you know, there have been articles by Albright by Kissinger, by Soros by others, talking about how America has to save the world and America has done amazing things with the Marshall Plan, and so on. That was noble America, but they talk as if there's no such a thing as nasty America, supporting Pinochet, Vietnam, there are a whole series of things are noble America, more or less than nasty America? I don't know. But there's certainly both front and center. Here you have some of the best so-called minds in America who are just plain dumb. Okay, so So the dumbing down is everywhere. And, you know, I was reading a book by Harari, you know, the guy who did happiness, this well-known book, and he's got another one on 21 lessons for the 21st century. And I read something there. And it was like, sort of a revelation to me about this dumbing down, he starts out by saying, it's our disconnect from nature that's getting in our way. And social media are causing us to be more enticed by social relations. So we don't reflect I had written about reflection, but I didn't make this connection with dumbing down. We don't sufficiently reflect we just follow the crowd. So what happens is, you follow the club that you belong to, you know, if you're in a liberal club, and you believe in what Biden's doing or whatever and if you're in the conservative club, when you're like cruiser whoever God help us and not that I'm against conservatives I conservatives have perfectly good these guys aren't conservatives, these guys in nutcases, you know, so so everything is kind of you to join the Club, and you don't think about the issue, it's your line up, if it's abortion, you line up for you line up against, well, anybody who's against abortion of any kind, like a 12-year-old who's raped should bring a baby to term is monstrous, but I can understand the other extreme, which is abortion is not a convenient form of birth control. Okay. And it should be, you know, you should do it with care. And so, so we take these things to extremes because we don't, we belong to the club, and the club dictates what we think. And that's what's dumbing us down? I realized,
Scott Allen 24:04
Well, I don't know if you've explored the work of Robert Kegan at Harvard, in the Graduate School of Education. Some of his work is around adult development. Have you explored that Henry?
Henry Mintzberg 24:14
Oh, Keegan Lee, I know the name. Yeah.
Scott Allen 24:18
I will send you a couple of resources and put some resources in the show notes. But yeah, it's very interesting. If he's an adult development theorist, and, you know, he talks about different complexities of the mind. And it's an adult development stage theory. And essentially, if I'm at a lower developmental level, I might see the world in a very dualistic, this that right, wrong. What's in it for me, me my mind kind of perspective. Stage three might be an individual who consumes whatever is in their sphere. That's called the socialized mind. If it's Republican or if it's Democrat, or if it's Catholicism, if it's Judaism, I'm going to consume it wholeheartedly. That's my tribe. That's my community. And I struggle at times from a complexity of mind standpoint to kind of get out of that and see maybe some of the limitations of some of those beliefs. Or maybe, to your point, what we need to own what we have done that's been atrocious and world history that we wouldn't be proud of. Right? That takes a certain complexity of mind to be able to reflect on some of those aspects, right.
Henry Mintzberg 25:36
It takes a brilliant mind to be able to hold that figured out. Okay, we said, told two thoughts in your mind at the same time and not get confused. He says,
Scott Allen 25:47
yes. Are we producing citizens that have that complexity of mind to be able to value the balance? Or is it really just about me? Yeah. And there are factions of people who, at least in my experience in the last two years where you say, wear a mask to protect others? They can't, it's about them. They can't bring themselves to make that decision.
Henry Mintzberg 26:12
Yeah. It's about me, or it's about us. It's about my tribe, or it's about me myself.
Scott Allen 26:17
Yes, yes, yes, yes. As we wind our time down, I don't know that we're going to solve the world's problems. But what I am going to do is share the resources you've created, because I think it's a wonderful way of thinking. And I even loved the little tour that you took me on and our listeners on of the world on how some societies are out of balance, how some societies are more in balance, of course, we're not going to have any society that's perfect. In a country, that's perfect. But generally speaking, you're going to start seeing signs and symptoms. If individuals are attacking your capital, or burning down police precincts, we're sick, we're not well, we're not in balance, we're out of balance. And those are symptoms of some of that lack of balance. A question I have for you, is what have you been reading or streaming, or listening to? That's caught your attention lately, and it could have stuffed something to do with what we've just discussed, it may have nothing to do with what we just discussed. But what's caught your eye in recent months,
Henry Mintzberg 27:21
I'm really struck by Harari,, an Israeli guy who wrote Sapiens, which was a huge success. I'm reading the one on 21 lessons for the 21st century. And some of them I don't agree with but one of them really struck me. I'm just trying to figure out what is dumbing us down? And I think he hit it perfectly.
Scott Allen 27:43
Well, I really enjoyed Sapiens as well, that was a great book, even in the beginning, where we learned that there were a number of different sapiens and Homo sapiens, quote-unquote, one. And we don't really know how, if we made it our way to winning or if we destroyed one another, but just absolutely fascinating, right? Yeah. And it kind of starts there, and then takes you on this journey. It's a great, great read.
Henry Mintzberg 28:13
And he writes brilliantly, he writes Absolutely, brilliantly.
Scott Allen 28:17
I'm very, very thankful for your good thinking. And helping us frame up and think through some of these real challenges that we face. And I know that your work has fundamentally shifted how I think about some of these challenges that we are facing. Because again, there are some symptoms in a lot of different places around the world, that we aren't well, and why is that? What's going on? And probably just like our bodies, when things get out of balance, then symptoms start to show. Yeah, and I think it's such a great way of helping us think about some of these challenges we face. I thank you for your good work, sir. I thank you for your time today. So much appreciate it. And I look forward to talking again,
Henry Mintzberg 29:10
Scott, you did your homework beautifully. And I love the questions and I love the conversation. If more people were like you we wouldn't be in bad shape, right?
Scott Allen 29:24
That's the best compliment I've ever received at the end of an episode. So thank you, Sir!
Henry Mintzberg 29:30
You have to have me on, again, and I'll outdo it!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai