Bedtime Stories For Managers

Nights this month, unplug from your mobile phone and both enjoy and learn from Henry Mintzberg’s 42 former blog posts compiled into his new book, Bedtime Stories for Managers.

The stories teach you how to transform an organization from one that:

Functions as collections of Human Resources to communities of human beings.
Where thinking always comes first to one that sees first or does first in order to think better.
Measures like mad to one that serves with soul.
Must be the best to one where they do their best.

At less than 200 pages, you can read the 42 succinct, enlightening and actionable stories/lessons in a few hours. Or, perhaps you select a couple stories each night to read over the next month.

Some of my favorite takeaways are:

Managers are important to the extent that they help other people be important.
An effective organization is an interacting network, not a vertical hierarchy. Effective managers work throughout; they don’t sit on some top.
Out of the network emerge strategies, as engaged people solve little problems that can grow into big strategies.
To manage is to connect naturally with human beings. Managing thus means engaging, based on judgment, rooted in context.
Leadership is a sacred trust earned from the respect of others.

I also like this quote by Benjamin Franklin featured in the book:

“If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”

Mintzberg is Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal and author of fifteen books.

Thank you to the book publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

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