Henry Mintzberg - Developing Today's Managers For Tomorrow

Henry Mintzberg is among the most recognisable names in management gurudom, celebrated for his challenging thinking about leadership and strategy. Sheppard Moscow was pleased to sponsor a recent Corporate Research Forum workshop led by Professor Mintzberg.

From his base at McGill University in Montreal, Professor Mintzberg has articulated strong views in recent years about what he feels works or doesn't work in management education, whether provided at business schools or in-company.

At the same time, he also champions the role of the 'manager' per se, in reaction to the volumes of scribing about leadership in recent times. Leadership is one of the roles of managers, but not the only one.

These two themes came together in the CRF workshop, which addressed the subject of management development. Together with his collaborator Jonathan Gosling of the Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter - who co-presented at the CRF meeting - Mintzberg described his framework for designing management education, based on five elements.

Managing the self (the reflective mind-set)

Managing organizations (the analytic mind-set)

Managing context (the worldly mind-set)

Managing relationships (the collaborative mind-set)

Managing change (the action mind-set)

There are many tensions and dilemmas that today's managers must negotiate if they are to enable their organisations to survive in the future. Mintzberg's view - as propounded in his recent book Managers not MBAs (2004) -is that there are distinct limits to what class-room learning can do to help prepare managers to guide their organisations successfully into the future.

Mintzberg and Gosling argue that management education should be grounded in practical experiences, shared insights and reflection, and ensuring that any teaching of theory should be connected and tested in the realities of the workplace. This serves to build the capabilities that can handle the multiple challenges that tomorrow will bring.

The workshop included participative elements that provided a taste of how this approach can be applied.

Attendance at the workshop was open to members of CRF only, so for further details of CRF's programme of activities and how to get involved please go to www.crforum.co.uk

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