Managers not MBAs

Described as a hard look at the soft practice of management, Henry Mintzberg crafts a masterful analysis of contemporary management practice seeking to identify solutions in current management education.

Feeling that the conventional Master of Business Administration programs were teaching students more about the science of management than the art and craft of management, Mintzberg seeks to help organisations survive and thrive.

Mintzberg explores the concept of management as the practice of blending craft, viewed as experience with art, viewed as insight and science, viewed as analysis. Released as a sequel to The Nature of Managerial Work that sought to dispel the myth of overly analytical managers, this current work examines soft management skills lacking in current managers. 

Mintzberg described his personal growing disconnect between the practice of management taught in classrooms of the leading universities and what was really going on in the corporate world. Ironically for myself, I have undertaken all the soft management units to yet no avail.

You really need the scientific knowledge and skills of cost accounting, financial accounting, finance, quantitative analysis, macro-economics, micro-economics and decision making to firstly get a shot at certain jobs and to gain promotion to coveted positions.

My gripe is different, I constantly deal with people who have been promoted beyond their abilities the lacking the prerequisite technical and quantitative skills. Instead I see those possessing only the ability to build close relationships with people in power as their main skill-set. Soft management skills are needed in business, no argument there but they can't be rated higher than technical skills.

We all know what that means, promotions in my workplace are based on friendships and favours, not on skills, so unless you are part of the crony club - better to look for promotions elsewhere. As the old adage goes, if you are not on the inside then you are on the outside.