2013-05-21T03:01:31-04:00 Henry Mintzberg http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=henry-mintzberg Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Henry Mintzberg Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1581054 2012-06-08T13:02:03-04:00 2012-08-08T05:12:10-04:00

Henry Mintzberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-mintzberg/
As with so many contentious political issues these days, many people in Quebec have duly lined up on one side or the other. Left or right, it's all black and white. That's a lot easier than facing the ambiguities of a messy reality.

The New York Times ran an op-ed piece by two professors of political science at the University of Montreal, who likened Quebec to Putin's Russia, and called its government "rogue," one of the most right-wing here in 40 years. These commentators did not exaggerate the extent of the fee increases 75 per cent; they just failed to mention that it would be introduced over several years, finally to reach a total of less than $4,000 per annum -- not far from what I paid in 1960, adjusting for inflation. Moreover, the lion's share of the costs of that education would continue to be covered by the public purse. Had such facts been presented in the article, American readers would have laughed at these protests.

Come pay us a visit up here in Putin-land. You will find that, even under this government, Quebec remains the most socially liberal place in North America by a country mile. After months of disruptive marches, the government did grossly overreact. That helped the students, by bringing out other protesters, while it deflected attention away from the issue of tuition, toward that of democracy itself. Democracy should have been the issue all along.

These students have claimed to be on strike. Against whom? Surely they were not striking against the colleges and universities that provide their education. Could they have been striking against the government that funds most of that education? They are not its employees. By trying to have this seen as a strike, the students were justifying their demand for "negotiations" with the government. In this they have succeeded, although these negotiations have so far gone nowhere.

The students who joined the protests (in fact, less than one-third of all those in the colleges and universities) have seen their cause as noble. After all, education benefits all of society. True enough, but the prime beneficiaries of education are the educated themselves, who come out advantaged. Thus a party driven by its own self interest has maneuvered itself into a position of negotiating public policy in Quebec. Consider the parallel with the maneuvering by industry groups in the United States Congress, except that there it goes on in the back rooms rather than on the front streets. And the purpose, ostensibly at least, is to influence public policy, not negotiate it.

Should a social service for some be paid for by all? In the case of health care, the Canadian answer has been yes: for decades we have had universal, publically-funded coverage. But health care is not higher education. First, any of us can get sick, so we are all potential beneficiaries. Second, these benefits offer no advantage beyond, at best, being restored to one's previous state of health.

Canadians of modest income understand full well that the alternative to paying for this through taxes is two-tier health care, which would put them at a disadvantage. Two tiers are intrinsic in higher education: some receive it and others don't.

In some places, the state pays for all of this education, sometimes even living expenses as well. Go justify that to the middle income taxpayer whose child did not make it into university. In other places, the government pays none of it, which leaves many graduates overwhelmed with large debts. In Quebec, the government proposes to continue paying for most of education, which would leave those students who lack sufficient personal funds with moderate debts.

In these economic times, with social and health care programs being squeezed by governments on the left and the right, this seems like a reasonable compromise, indeed a generous one. The public purse is not a bottomless pit. Difficult trade-offs have to be made, and the subsidization of tuition for higher education hardly deserves priority. Don't fix the roads; subsidize the students? Freeze tuitions at the expense of the health care funding? How much easier it is to bang pots and pans on the streets, or resort to claiming that the colleges and universities are not making efficient use of the public money they receive, than to face such tradeoffs?

The protesting students of Quebec are mad as hell and claim they will not take it any more. Good. There are many issues about which to express outrage, by students and others everywhere. Near the top of that list should be every sort of challenge to democracy by special interest groups.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.824724 2011-02-17T17:19:39-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00

Henry Mintzberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-mintzberg/
First up pitching for Community was WikiLeaks, throwing curve balls. Diplomacy hit them all foul. Then Tahrir Square took to the mound, throwing fast balls, straight over the plate. Diplomacy never even saw them: by the time it realized one had gone by, the next was on its way.

Diplomacy is used to winning, probably because it normally plays against itself, or else with Dictators, to whom it lobs balls that they have been able to hit out of the park, collecting billions each time they passed home plate. Now along comes Community, a real competitor.

Where did Community come from? Out of obscurity, to be sure, but not out of thin air. It came off the ground, the last place Diplomacy would look. Its players got hungry, for food and freedom, and so they challenged Diplomacy.

The Community team has no sponsoring oligarchs, hardly even any leaders, at least in the conventional sense (look at WikiLeaks), or else all kinds of leaders (look in Tahrir Square). And it plays by a different set of rules. It is spontaneous and adaptable, which to Diplomacy looks unpredictable. Is that fair?

Worse still, Community is honest and transparent. That's certainly unfair: Diplomacy never saw anything like that before. For example, it expected the batter's box to be closed and wooden, not just a few lines on the ground that exposed its nudity for all to see. And boy, did a lot of fans come to see this.

To Diplomacy, this must have felt like a standing army having to face guerilla fighters (or the New York Times up against the Huffington Post?). Clearly this did not seem fair, at least compared with decades of gentlemanly Diplomacy, cheered on by Dictators. Of course fairness depends on where you sit in the stands.

Perhaps the best way to understand the difference between Diplomacy and Community is to revisit what happened after that game In Cairo ended. While Diplomacy whizzed off in its limousines, breathing great sighs of relief, Community remained to clean up the mess left on the playing field. Diplomacy has tended to leave its messes for everyone else.

We have always been led to believe that games are won by the power at the plate, not to mention the authority to name the umpires. Community is now proving, as if we needed this lesson again, that the really great teams are built on pride, spontaneous energy, personal engagement. What that team in Tahrir Square exhibited was the audacity of hope, while back in Washington, looking on in disbelief, we saw the audacity of Diplomacy.

So where to from here? If you are a fan of Diplomacy, two strikes does not look good. If you root for Community, then things are looking up: the Dictators are hightailing it out of the ball park, no longer sustained by Diplomacy that is naked in the batter's box and unable see the ball.

Will Diplomacy adapt? Rumor has it that Henry Kissinger left the game early, although it was not clear whether out of dispair or to go home and change his rule book on Diplomacy. Don't count on the latter, but in any event, it's too late. Community is already rewriting the book on Diplomacy. First up is the playing field: now it will have to be level.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.784781 2010-11-17T12:17:30-05:00 2011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00

Henry Mintzberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-mintzberg/
We get the government we deserve. If we vote for empty promises, we should expect empty actions. If we vote out of anger, we will find ourselves with angry politicians who are mean. If we expect little from government, in the belief that it is rotten, then they should not be surprised to get rotten government that does little. And vice versa.

Americans don't much believe in government. Many think it incapable of doing most everything. (Ronald Reagan, as U.S. President, claimed that "The ten most dangerous words in the English language are 'Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help!'" He, of course, was there to help.) As a consequence, many capable people hesitate to work for government, while some who do function under a cloud of inadequacy. Hence there is a lot of inept government in America, which of course only makes people even more suspicious of government. If ever there was a self-fulfilling prophecy, this is it. And that, of course, plays into the hands of corporate executives and others that don't want to be bothered by government.

I was at a dinner party in Virginia recently, where people were railing against government. I got nowhere trying to make the case that they need government, let alone better government, so I asked: "How about the military? Do you respect that?" Sure, came the reply. "But is that not government?" ("here to help," I might have added) Hm... they never thought about that.

In the great condemnation of American government, the military is somehow exempt. It is perceived as highly competent; in fact, it is revered by many Americans. Two of the most vociferous people at that party were retired from the military, which means that their salaries before and their pensions since have come straight from the government -- from the taxpayers. Surprise!

Now if so much in American government is so bad, then the public service has to be marginalized: its top ranks, several layers into each department, have to be reserved for political appointees, ostensibly to keep those civil servants in their place. For example, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was headed in the George W. Bush administration by a good Republican who had previously been supervising the judges of horse shows. He presided over the debacle in New Orleans. (Contrast this with the recent effort in Chile to save those miners: it was orchestrated by government.) Bush's Secretary of the Army was a businessman who announced on arrival that he was going to bring in "sound business practice." He came from Enron.

In the military, however, political appointments are taboo. The generals -- one, two, three, and four stars -- are not removed en mass every time there's a new government. But why not? Shouldn't they too be replaced by people who ran horse shows and failing companies?

"We can't do that," came the reply at the party. After all, the military is so important, the experience of the generals so critical. Unlike education? Health care? Emergency relief?

In Canada, we believe in government. As soon as a serious problem arises, most of us expect the government to deal with it. One consequence of this is that we too get the government we deserve, at least at the civil service level: competent. Not faultless, but is business faultless? Over the years, I have been struck time and again by how thoughtful, concerned, and capable are so many of the senior civil servants I have met in Ottawa.

We barely have political appointments in Canada. The "deputy ministers," who report directly to the ministers and advise them as well as run the departments, are usually career civil servants, or else people appointed for their competencies, not their connections. And so too are the people who report to them.

To appreciate how Canadians feel about government, consider this. In 2004, CBC television (itself government owned, with a radio network that has to be one of the best in the world) held a contest to elect "the greatest Canadian". And the winner: Tommy Douglas.

If you are an American who has never heard of Tommy Douglas, don't worry: he is hardly a household name in America. If CBS ran such a contest, with Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson the likely winner, believe me, we would know those names in Canada. We could have picked Wayne Gretsky or Pierre Elliott Trudeau -- you probably heard of them. But we picked Tommy Douglas. Who is he?

Tommy Douglas's highest post in life was the leadership of a marginal opposition party in the Canadian parliament, and before that, the premiership of the province of Saskatchewan (population at the time: less than a million). He was obviously chosen for another reason: Tommy Douglas was the father of Medicare, Canada's system of health care that covers all medical and hospital costs for every Canadian, with the money coming straight out of general taxation.

Douglas brought Medicare to Saskatchewan in 1961, against the fierce opposition of the American Medical Association, which saw it as a foothold for socialized health care in North America. And then in federal politics in 1966, he led his party to vote with the minority Liberal government to pass Medicare for the entire country.

When Americans debate changes in their system of health care, as they do regularly, the opponents point to Canadian Medicare as a disaster. So why do Canadians think so highly of Tommy Douglas? Because Canadian Medicare is not a disaster at all: health care in Canada costs much less than it does in the United States while its outcomes are consistently better. (The two countries had comparable costs before Medicare came to Canada.)

Of course, we never stop complaining about our health care services in Canada. But neither do people in every country I have ever visited. A few years ago, after listening to some Italians in this field go on and on about their health care, I asked "So how did Italy come out in the last WHO rankings?" Their reply: "Oh, second best in the world." Apparently second best is not good enough.

In fact, anything to do with health care is never good enough. At a party in Montreal, a young physician was going on and on about the dire state of health care in Quebec. Finally I interrupted her and asked: "You did your residency in the U.S. What about that?" She threw her hands in the air and blurted out: "Don't get me started on the American system!" Paraphrasing Churchill, I guess Canada has the worst health care system in North America -- except for all the alternatives.

There are, however, bright spots in American health care. One is the Veterans Administration. There you go again -- government. Michael Porter, Harvard Business School's strategy star, has co-authored a popular article and book about redefining health care in America. On government-controlled regulations, the book states that it is "never a real solution" (2006: 382); on the unsatisfactory performance of American health care over many years, it claims that "while this may be expected in a state-controlled sector, it is nearly unimaginable in a competitive market" (2004: 21). How about the opposite, Professor Porter -- a few facts? There was not a mention at this place in the book about the Veterans Administration (although a search in its index revealed three brief references to it elsewhere, two of them favorable, the third neutral).

Most Canadians revere Medicare as a pillar of the country's collective democracy, much as Americans revere business as a pillar of the country's individualistic democracy. But in a world that requires a decent if not dominant public sector, it is the Americans who get the government they deserve, not the one they need.

Henry Mintzberg is Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal and Faculty Director of its International Masters for Health Leadership (www.mcgill.ca/imhl).]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.636852 2010-07-07T15:09:57-04:00 2011-05-25T17:00:24-04:00

Henry Mintzberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-mintzberg/
To appreciate this, connect two dots: economy and enterprise. Then you will understand why all the president's horses and all the president's men will not be able to put the American economy back together again.

Economics, unlike other social sciences, sits in mid-air. Whereas psychologists and anthropologists study human behavior on the ground, much of economics is about analyzing statistics from above, and then applying rather narrow theories about human behavior to infer their causes. Economists often get these causes wrong.

Consider productivity. For years economists around the world have been lauding the productivity of the American economy. Since product output measured against labor input was going steadily up, they concluded that corporate America must have been doing things right. Maybe it was doing some things wrong.

Imagine a manufacturing company that fires everybody and ships from stock. That's productive (not to mention profitable) -- until, of course, the company runs out of stock. I believe that American enterprise has been running out of stock.

Enterprises are the heart and soul of an economy, especially the American one. Their activities on the ground generate those statistics in the air. Moreover, America's legendary sense of enterprise -- embodied in the energy and resourcefulness of its people -- has been the key to its economic miracle. The dismal state to which the American economy has now fallen can be attributed significantly to the steady deterioration of many of its large enterprises, which has undermined the country's very sense of enterprise. In a word, corporate America is sick.

If this sound overstated, then consider some evidence, which is everywhere except in those statistics of the economists. Most obvious has been the sorry state of a number of the country's most prominent companies, in banking, insurance, and automobiles. They are the tip of a rather large iceberg -- where many more companies with less exposure in the media can be found. Add to this some of the success stories -- for the shareholders at least -- which may in fact have been failures for the economy. What did the country get, for example, from a financial sector that was pocketing one-third of total domestic profits, much of it ripped off from people who didn't realize the risks that were being taken with their money? And what are we to make of some of the major pharmaceutical companies that, while unable to get their research acts together, have been masters at lobbying government and promoting me-too products, protected by patents that have allowed them to price carte blanche? A viable economy needs to be led by explorers, not exploiters.

There are, of course, notable exceptions among the large enterprises. Apple has certainly been an explorer par excellence. But it is hardly mainstream corporate America -- which is precisely what makes it so notable.

It has been said that a fish rots from the head down. So let's look at the heads of mainstream corporate American -- its leadership, so called.

Americans revere leadership, probably because they get so little of it. A leader is not the hero who rides in on the great white horse to save the day. He or she is a person who gets personally and deeply engaged, so as to engage others, in order to bring out the best in them. Above all, he or she sets an example for the others. Considering their bonuses, how many such leaders are there in the Fortune 500? As many as a dozen or two?

What kind of a leader allows him or herself to be so singled out, to be treated as the be all and end all of corporate success? Companies need to pay bonuses, we are told, to attract the right people. No, the companies that do pay such bonuses often get the wrong people: narcissists who put their own welfare ahead of the enterprises they are supposed to be leading.

A recent Gallup poll suggested that 55% of the American workforce is not engaged and another 16% is actively disengaged. Perhaps this is best explained by the relentless downsizing of the large American companies, which has undermined the enterprising spirit of the country and its workforce. Attribute this downsizing to the executive bonuses, not to the quest for productivity. No sooner did a public company miss its financial targets, often while remaining profitable, than out the door were sent thousands of its people: bones thrown to the baying wolves of Wall Street, in order to protect the price of the stock and thus the bonuses of the executives.

But how could so many people have suddenly become "redundant"? Who, we should ask, were running these companies before the firings? Did they not notice all these redundancies? Most of the time, of course, it was the very same CEOs who did the firing.

A robust enterprise is a community of human beings, not a collection of "human resources." What better way to destroy community, and discourage enterprise, than to fire so many people? Those left behind, with trust lost in their "leadership," have been inclined to put down their heads, cover their tails, and soldier on until they burned out or were themselves downsized. Call this productive if you care not a whit for the human beings of an enterprise.

So what are all the president's economic horses and men to do about this? Not much. In this storm, economists are like meteorologists: they can take their measurements and make some predictions, but they are unable to render the necessary changes. This problem was made in corporate America, and there is where it will have to be resolved -- patiently and deliberately.

The slow fix can begin with the rotting heads of the large corporations. The narcissists will have to be driven out of the executive suites, along with their shameful bonuses. In their place will have to come some real leadership: people truly engaged in their enterprise, personally and deeply, in order to rebuild its sense of community. Not birds of passage, not MBAs who macro-lead instead of micro-manage, who believe they can run anything by deeming performance, but people with a profound appreciation for their industry, their enterprise, its products and services, and especially its people.

Next will have to be an appreciation of the importance of the small and medium-sized companies in economic development. These are often the explorers. They need financial institutions that support them, in ways that do not push them toward exploitation as they grow. If that means keeping them out of the stock market, then so be it. At the very least, ways will have to be found to get the short-sighted pressures of that stock market off the backs of all enterprises: quarterly earning reports, myopic analysts, and all the rest.

There is more to an economy than economics, and more to capitalism than the financial markets that now dominate it. Americans will have to rebuild their enterprises carefully in order to recapture their legendary sense of enterprise.

Henry Mintzberg (www.mintzberg.org), Cleghorn Professor at McGill University, is the author of Managing (2009) and a founding partner of CoachingOurselves.com.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.528437 2010-04-07T11:01:15-04:00 2011-05-25T16:05:22-04:00

Henry Mintzberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-mintzberg/
But one tipping point may just expose the next. Even if Netanyahu is dragged to the bargaining table, albeit one that is kilometers long, can anyone believe that he, or any other Israeli prime minister, will negotiate a Palestinian state? How long will it take to reach this obvious tipping point: more days? more decades?

No-one should be surprised by this situation. Had the establishment of the state of Israel required the permission of the Palestinians, there would be no state of Israel. Likewise, should a state of Palestine have to await the permission of the Israeli government? If ever there has been a place in need of binding arbitration on the diplomatic front, surely this is it. There may be a great deal to work out, but can anyone believe more so than with the current expectations of a negotiated agreement?

When America gets this message, all its timid allies will likely fall in line, and the State of Palestine will come into being. And that may be the best thing that can happen to Israel.

Israel was established thanks in good part to the guilt of the western countries over their behavior toward the Jews during World War Two -- and I refer not just to Germany. Surely there must now be enough guilt to go around, especially throughout the Middle East but also in Europe and North America, about the treatment of the Palestinians these past decades. Perhaps it could be put to some good use with regard to the settlements: what if a fund were established to enable Palestinians to buy the settlement buildings for the cost of their construction? That might avoid the debacle of destruction that accompanied the settlers' departure from Gaza, while helping current ones to resettle in Israel.

As for Jerusalem, the tide seems to be turning against Israel's claim to the whole city. This suggests a situation akin to divided Berlin. But there is an alternative; at least with regard to the old city: the Vatican, a religious state within a political one. What if each religion controlled its own quarter and holy sites, while together they formed a common administration around the table? This may be rife with complications, but surely less than two states facing each other across that table?

A brilliant woman named Mary Parker Follett wrote in the 1920s that there are two common ways not to resolve a conflict: domination by one side and compromise by both. The Middle East has had decades of domination and unrelenting calls for compromise.

In the case of domination, she wrote, the defeated side "will simply wait for its chance to dominate," while in the case of compromise, neither side "gets what it wants" and so "the conflict will come up again and again." Here we have the Middle East in a nutshell.

This conflict in the Middle East is not between Israelis and Palestinians so much as between extremists and moderates. And the extremists on both sides have been steadily winning, as they have used each other's outrages to ratchet up their own. The trouble is that while one or other of the extremist sides wins each battle, always at the expense of the moderates, neither side ever wins the war, meaning to dominate the other. Israel will not disappear into the sea any more than will millions of Palestinians leave the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Mary Parker Follett suggested another approach, beyond domination and compromise: "never let yourself be bullied by an either-or situation"; instead "find a third way," which she called "integration," when both sides face what they truly want and find a common solution to that." The basis for such a solution in the Middle East lies in the fact that the moderates want peace and quiet, not settlements or missiles. Indeed there are many examples of moderate Palestinians and Israelis cooperating constructively with each other.

Lord Acton gave us with what is probably the truest law of human nature: that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thanks to the unwavering friendship of America, Israel has been able to exercise near absolute power in its immediate region. It dominates, and its current politics allow precious little space for compromise. Instead it continues to pursue its suicidal strategy of settlements. Remove American support, and watch that house of cards collapse.

Flaubert wrote that "The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously." He might have said that about true friends of a country too. This may be the moment when America can become a true friend of Israel.

Henry Mintzberg is Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal. ]]>