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Book Description

If you're like most managers and things keep you up at night, now you can turn to a book that's designed especially for you! But you won't find talking rabbits or princesses here. (There is a cow, but it doesn't jump.) Henry Mintzberg has culled forty-two of the best posts from his widely read blog and turned them into a deceptively light, sneakily serious compendium of sometimes heretical reflections on management.

The moral here is this: managers need to leave their castles and find out what's actually going on in their kingdoms. And like real bedtime stories, these essays have metaphors galore. So prepare to grow strategies like weeds and organize like a cow. Discover the maestro myth of managing, find the soft underbelly of hard data, and learn why downsizing is bloodletting and your board should be a bee. Mintzberg writes, “Just try not to be outraged by anything you read, because some of my most outrageous ideas turn out to be my best. They just take a while to become obvious.”

Table of Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. COMING UP …
  5. Good Evening …
    1. About This Storyteller
    2. The Tooth Fairies
  6. ONE Stories of Managing
    1. Managing Scrambled Eggs
    2. The Maestro Myth of Managing
    3. Managing to Lead
    4. Selecting the Flawed Manager
    5. The Epidemic of Managing without Soul
    6. Managing in the Age of the Internet
    7. Decision-Making: It’s Not What You Think
    8. Growing Strategies Like Weeds in a Garden
  7. TWO Stories of Organizing
    1. Organizing Like a Cow
    2. Communityship beyond Leadership
    3. Networks Are Not Communities
    4. Transformation from the Top? Or Engagement on the Ground?
    5. Species of Organizations
    6. Why Do We Say “Top Management” but never “bottom management”?
    7. Enough of Silos? How about Slabs?
    8. Manageable and Unmanageable Managing
    9. The Board as Bee
  8. THREE Stories of Analyzing
    1. Analyst: Analyze Thyself
    2. Ye Gods: An Efficient Orchestra!
    3. What Could Possibly Be Wrong with “Efficiency”? Plenty.
    4. The Soft Underbelly of “Hard Data”
    5. The Tricky Task of Measuring Managing
    6. Evidence and Experience in Management, Medicine, and More
    7. How National Happiness became gross
  9. FOUR Stories about Development
    1. Jack’s Turn
    2. MBAs as CEOs: Some Troubling Evidence
    3. Engage Managers Beyond Administration (“emba”)
    4. Don’t Just Sit There …
  10. FIVE Stories in Context
    1. Managing Family Business
    2. Global? How about Worldly?
    3. Who Can Possibly Manage a Hospital?
    4. Managing Government, Governing Management
  11. SIX Stories about Responsibility
    1. A CEO’s Letter to the Board—long overdue
    2. “Downsizing” as Twenty-First-Century Bloodletting
    3. Productive and Destructive Productivity
    4. The Scandal That Is a Syndrome
    5. Please Welcome CSR 2.0
  12. SEVEN Stories for Tomorrow
    1. The Extraordinary Power of Ordinary Creativity
    2. Customer Service or serving customers?
    3. Enough of MORE: Better Is Better
    4. Be Good: The Best Is Too Low a Standard
    5. Rise and Shine!
  13. Notes
  14. Index
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