Mintzberg

 

*/by Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc/*

Henry Mintzberg is a management consultant and a business school academic. 
Perhaps he is best known for his book "Managers, Not MBAs".  I really
like, and agree with most of what Mintzberg writes about, although many find
him too controversial.  He has the audacity to claim that business schools
aren't always all they are cracked up to be.  His writing was the
inspiration for an academic piece I wrote and published called "Business
School Myths", which I think I outlined in a blog a few years ago.

Mintzberg, like Drucker, believes that business is more than just knowing a
set of formulas, or a list of best practices.  In essence (and I am greatly
paraphrasing here) he argues that business is about wisdom, intuition and
thinking.  These are ideas I strongly believe in, and ideas that I strongly
believe need to be practiced more in risk management.

In reviewing some of my notes on Mintzberg that I am compiling for a book I
am writing, I came across this quote, which I thought was valuable to risk
managers in particular.  The quote is:  "Certainly we should measure what
we can – so long as it does not bias what we can't.  The trouble is that
it often does.  It drives out judgment, without which all measurement is
useless." 

Do you agree or disagree?