By Rolf Crocker

Hey, how are you?  It's been a while since I've published a fresh book report, but I can assure you - this one is worth the wait.  Every 5 - 7 years, a book comes along that challenges all of your assumptions (that is, if you're open to having your assumptions challenged - I hope you are!).  Like 'Re-Imagine' by Tom Peters was for me in '03, the book in this review takes much of my existing views on leadership, management, systems and processes and turns them on their collective heads.  To give you a teaser quote, in speaking of several of the 'gurus' of management and leadership, the Author says, "Each of them is wrong because all of them are right.  Managing is not one of these things but all of them; it is controlling and doing and dealing and thinking and leading and deciding and more, not added up but blended together."  So if you're ever wondering what you do for a living, I think that quote is a pretty good start!

Managing Henry Mintzberg (©2009, Henry Mintzberg, Berrett-Koehler Publishers).  Called by Tom Peters, "Perhaps the world's premier management thinker," Mintzberg tackles the herculean task of putting together a cohesive, consistent theory of management - a role that has been push off the table and minimized by much of what has been of late described as leadership.  As Mintzberg said in an article he wrote for Business Week (August 9, 2009), "It became fashionable some years ago to separate "leaders" from "managers"-you know, distinguishing those who "do the right things" from those who "do things right." It sounds good. But think about how this separation works in practice. U.S. businesses now have too many leaders who are detached from the messy process of managing. So they don't know what's going on."  In this book, Mintzberg seeks to reconcile leadership and management, not as separate roles, but a combined role:  "We should be seeing managers as leaders and leadership as management practiced well."

In "Managing," Mintzberg follows "a day in the life" of 29 managers in business, government, health care and other disciplines, taking the data of what they actually do and reconstructing the information into a cohesive theory that gives as good a framework as I've seen as to what the manager's role truly is - not "either/or" but "both and more."  He then breaks down each component of the framework in detail with real-world examples.  At the back of the book, he gives a synopsis of each of the 29 manager's days that he spent time with from morning until night.  Very interesting, very revealing and, at least to me, extremely encouraging in the fact that I'm not alone in my struggle to get my head and heart around this beast we call 'management.'

This is the must-read book for anyone who is looking to give structure and definition to their roles as managers and leaders.  As Mintzberg quotes Donald O. Hebbs in Chapter 3 of this book, "A good theory is one that holds together long enough to get you to a better theory."  Take everything you've learned and read to date on management and leadership and make it subordinate to this "better" theory.  5+ Stars