Mintzberg’s Model of Managing: Random Thoughts from an Observation

Fayol was a mining engineer and it is too easily forgotten that he originally discerned five primary functions of management (and 14 principles of management) in the context of the mining industry; to be exact, the five primary functions of management were planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. (The 14 principles of management were division of work, authority and responsibility, discipline, unity of command, unity of direction, subordination, remuneration, centralization and decentralization, scalar chain, order, equity, stability of tenure of personnel, initiative, and esprit de corps.) Most likely, Fayol conceived of the five primary functions as all-encompassing and mutually supporting dimensions of management, not necessarily what each and every manager would need to be engaged in 24 hours a day.

The employers of the managers that Mintzberg observed were a consulting firm, a school system, a technology firm, a consumer goods manufacturer, and a hospital.

The organizations were a public hospital (hospital administrator), a school system (a school superintendent), a high technology manufacturing firm (plant manager, with high autonomy), and a bank (bank president).

Mintzberg’s (2009) Model of Managing recognized untold varieties of managing that stem from 12 factors of management: (a) external context—which pertains to national culture, sector (business, government, etc.), and industry; (b) organizational context—which pertains to the form of the organization (entrepreneurial, professional, etc.) and its age, size, and stage of development; (c) job context—which pertains to the level in the hierarchy and the function (or work) supervised; (d) situational context—which pertains to temporary pressures and managerial fashion; and (e) personal context—which pertains to the background of the incumbent, his or her tenure (in the job, the organization, the industry), and personal style. Mintzberg makes the point that each of the 12 factors is insignificant on any given day: they must all be considered together, one managerial practice at a time, recognizing however that the most significant impact on a manager’s behavior is the nature of the organization.

The business models of multilateral development banks are country and client-driven, and priorities are identified in coordination with the countries themselves and other development partners including citizens, civil society and nongovernment organizations, foundations, the private sector, other development finance institutions, etc. Country strategies (leading to business plans for particularized portfolios of loans, grants, technical assistance, and equity operations) take shape through collaborative dialogue to ensure country involvement and ownership throughout the so-called project cycle.

ENFPs are outgoing and creative with the key skill of perceiving complicated patterns and information and assimilating these quickly; they are flexible, highly adaptable workers; they are driven by a keen devotion to their ideals and a strong drive to help others; less developed are their patience for routine tasks and projection of a serious, committed image. ENFPs need time alone to center themselves and make sure they are moving in a direction that is congruent with their values. Keirsey and Bates referred to ENFPs as Champions, one of four types belonging to the temperament they called the Idealists (Keirsey & Bates, 1984).

Another of Mintzberg’s notable contributions to the philosophy and practice of management is that of organizational configurations (aka species) (Mintzberg, 1979). Mintzberg (1979) distinguished entrepreneurial organizations, machine organizations (bureaucracies), professional organizations, project organizations (adhocracies), missionary organizations, and political organizations. For one, the machine organization is characterized by standardization: decision-making is centralized, tasks are grouped by functional departments, and work is formalized, with many routines and procedures; jobs are well-defined, with a formal planning process underpinned by budgets and verified by audits; business processes are regularly analyzed for efficiency. The chief feature of a machine organization is a pyramidal structure, with hierarchical functional lines that allow increasingly senior managers to command and control in turn.

Mintzberg’s (2009) Postures of Managing are to (a) maintain the workflow—to keep the organization on course; (b) connect externally—to maintain the boundary condition of the organization; (c) blend all around—to integrate the organization’s activities; (d) remote-control—to manage hands-off on the information plane; (e) fortify the culture—to instill a sense of community so that people might be trusted to function appropriately; (f) intervene strategically—to dive specific changes; (g) manage in the middle—to communicate and control on the information plane to facilitate the downward flow of strategies and transmit performance information back up the hierarchy; (h) manage out of the middle—to focus on the external roles of linking and dealing, thereby making special use of the negotiating skills of the manager; and (i) advise from the side—to influence others or simply respond to requests. (To complete his panoply of postures, Mintzberg has identified two others: the new manager—who has to learn to lead by persuasion since the usual hands-on autocratic approach Mintzberg says newcomers inevitably adopt reportedly comes up short; and the reluctant manager—who dispenses with managerial duties quickly to concentrate on other interests. (María is not new and certainly not reluctant).

Mintzberg’s (2009) Conundrums of Managing, titled to sound like unpublished oeuvres of J. K. Rowling, are (a) The Syndrome of Superficiality—how to get in deep when there is so much pressure to get it done; (b) The Predicament of Planning—how to plan, strategize, just plain think, let alone think ahead, in such a hectic job; (c) The Labyrinth of Decomposition—where to find synthesis in a world so decomposed by analysis; (d) The Quandary of Connecting—how to keep informed when managing by its very nature removed the manager from the very things being managed; (e) The Dilemma of Delegating—how to delegate when so much of the relevant information is personal, oral, and so often privileged; (f) The Mysteries of Measurement—how to manage it when you cannot rely on measuring it; (g) The Enigma of Order—how to bring order to the work of others when the work of managing is itself so disorderly; (h) The Paradox of Control—how to maintain the necessary state of controlled disorder when one’s own manager is imposing order; (i) The Clutch of Confidence—how to maintain a sufficient level of confidence without crossing over into arrogance; (j) The Ambiguity of Acting—how to act decisively in a complicated, nuanced world; (k) The Riddle of Change—how to manage change when there is the need to maintain continuity; and (l) The Ultimate Conundrum—how to possibly cope with all these conundrums concurrently. In my opinion, Mintzberg’s (2009) use of the word “conundrum” is not the best: the word appeared in the sixteenth century from unknown origins but is first recorded as a term of abuse for a crank or pedant, later coming to denote a whim or fancy, also a pun: this somehow detracts from Mintzberg’s (2009) intention to describe management as “a practice, learned primarily through experience, and rooted in context” (p. 9), with effective management “a tapestry woven of the threads of reflection, analysis, worldliness, collaboration, and proactiveness, all of it infused with personal energy and bonded by social integration” (p. 217).

Everyone knows that workers spend a third of their time reading and answering electronic mail. Even then, Mintzberg (2009) took no notice of the fact that electronic email—certainly official electronic mail—very often channels attachments such as voluminous technical reports that must be read, digested, and acted upon. (Oddly, the ease with which one can attach files leads many to expect immediate reactions to the content thereof).

Virtual teaming is one example: with respect to virtual team management, the predictor of success remains clarity of purpose; but, managing teams whose members are not in the same location or time zone (or may not even work in the same organization) requires deeper understanding of people, processes, and technology and recognition that trust is a much more important variable compared to face-to-face interactions.

Mintzberg’s (2009) Conundrums of Managing invited reference to paradoxical leadership (aka “both/and” leadership). As organizational ecologies become increasingly dynamic, complex, and competitive, we face intensified contradictory, or seemingly paradoxical, demands: every one of us—not just managers—must develop paradoxical leadership understandings and behaviors so we might visualize and reframe paradox (and thereby produce superior outcomes). The principle of yin–yang, which accepts that seemingly opposite or contrary forces might actually be interconnected, complementary, and even interdependent, serves well when one must synthesize with polarity thinking.

Many reasons have been advanced for abandoning performance reviews: in no particular order, levelheaded arguments are that performance reviews are backward-looking; they are frequently inconsistent; they damage teamwork; they are not necessary to lead a team; and they are expensive. The bottom line is that performance reviews are a solution in search of a problem.

Effectiveness is a measure of the extent to which an activity attains its objectives. But, effectiveness per se is insufficient: it needs to be countervailed and complemented by others—efficiency, impact, quality, sustainability, etc.—else everything becomes a nail to single-minded application of a hammer. Performance criteria should reflect as best they can the raison d’être of an organization (or related personnel functions).

Somewhere between maximal and minimal managing, “communityship”—which designates “how people pull together to function in collaborative institutions”—beckons consideration and use (as warranted) of participative, shared, distributed, and supportive managing (Mintzberg, 2015, p. 35).