Simply Managing

What Managers Do - and Can Do Better

By: Henry Mintzberg

Narrated by: David Drummond

In 2009 Henry Mintzberg's Managing was named one of the best books of the year by Strategy+Business and Library Journal, the number two business book of the year by the Toronto Globe and Mail, one of the top ten academic titles by Choice magazine, and the management book of the year in a competition organized by the Chartered Management Institute in association with the British Library.

So this is clearly abook every manager should listen to. But one of the issues Mintzberg addresses is the frenetic pace and relentless pressures of the job - most managers hardly have time to think. So Mintzberg has done some revising and some updating and has distilled the essence of his original book into a lean, action-oriented shortened version.

The core of the book remains the same: Mintzberg's observations of twenty-nine different managers, from business, government, and nonprofits, working in diverse settings ranging from a refugee camp to a symphony orchestra. What he saw led him to develop a new model of management, one firmly grounded in his conclusion that it is not a profession or a science. "It is a practice," he writes, "learned primarily through experience and rooted in context."

But context cannot be seen in the usual way. Factors such as national culture, level in a hierarchy, and even personal style turn out to have a far different influence - sometimes much less - than we have traditionally thought. Mintzberg also offers a compelling discussion of some of the inescapable conundrums of managing. How can you get in deep when there is so much pressure to get it done? How can you manage it when you can't reliably measure it? How do you balance the need for change with the need for continuity?

He concludes with a provocative look at what being an effective manager really means, which he describes as "engaging management." This is the most authoritative and revealing book yet written about what managers do, how they do it, and how they can have the greatest impact.

©2013 Henry Mintzberg (P)2013 Blackstone Audiobooks

Leadership as a management process

Mintzberg has been a voice for pragmatic approaches to the art, craft and science of management and leadership. However making sense is not for the faint hearted and organizations continue to trundle along with anti human practices in something that is a human centred world. It’s for the fringes who want real change but then again those might not need this book as they’re organically people oriented

Profound.

The most pragmatic book on the topic I have come across. Profound. It’s eye-opening,

No real value

I can’t believe I listened to entire book and got almost nothing out of it. I wanted to stop listening after every chapter and I should have. This book seems to be just filled with definitions of managing words and words that the author makes up.