Managers not MBAs : a hard look at the soft practice of managing and management development

A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development Fast Company called Henry Mintzberg "one of the most original minds in management." Tom Peters named his book The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning "my favorite management book in the last 25 years...no contest." Now, in this sweeping critique of how managers are educated and how, as a consequence, management is practiced, Henry Mintzberg offers thoughtful and controversial ideas for reforming both. "The MBA trains the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences" Mintzberg writes. "Using the classroom to help develop people already practicing management is a fine idea, but pretending to create managers out of people who have never managed is a sham." Because conventional MBA programs are designed for people without managerial experience, they overemphasize analysis and denigrate experience.

That leaves a distorted impression of management, which has had a corrupting influence on its practice.

Leaders cannot be created in a classroom. They arise in context.But people who already practice management can significantly improve their effectiveness given the opportunity to learn thoughtfully from their own experience.

Mintzberg calls for a more engaging approach to managing and a more reflective approach to management education.

He also outlines how business schools can become true schools of management. "Managers not MBAs goes beyond polemic. The book is also a rousing manifesto for the thoroughgoing reform of management education and how we think about it."- Michael Skapinker, Managment Editor, Financial Times