The world of the manager is complicatedand confusing. Making sense of it requiresnot a knack for simplification but the

ability to synthesize insightsfrom different mind-sets intoa comprehensible whole.The .

FiveMinds

of aManageonathan Gosling and ^ ^ -^byjonathan Gosling and

Henry Mintzberg

54

THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE of a major Canadian com-pany complained recently that he can't get hisengineers to think like managers. It's a common

complaint, but behind it lies an uncommonly importantquestion: What does it mean to think like a manager?

Sadly, little attention has been paid to that question inrecent years. Most of us have become so enamored of"leadership" that "management" has been pushed intothe background. Nobody aspires to being a good manageranymore; everybody wants to be a great leader. But theseparation of management from leadership is dangerous.Just as management without leadership encourages anuninspired style, which deadens activities, leadershipwithout management encourages a disconnected style,which promotes hubris. And we all know the destructive

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

power of hubris in organizations. So let's get back to plainold management.

The problem, of course, is that plain old managementis complicated and confusing. Be global, managers aretold, and be local. Collaborate, and compete. Change, per-petually, and maintain order. Make the numbers whilenurturing your people. How is anyone supposed to rec-oncile all this? The fact is, no one can. To be effective,managers need to face the juxtapositions in order to ar-rive at a deep integration of these seemingly contradic-tory concerns. That means they must focus not only onwhat they have to accomplish but also on how they haveto think. Managers need various "mind-sets."

Helping managers appreciate that was the challengewe set for ourselves in the mid-1990s when we began to

develop a new master's program for practicing managers.We knew we could not rely on the usual structure of MBAeducation, which divides the management world intothe discrete business functions of marketing, finance, ac-counting, and so on. Our intention was to educate man-agers who were coming out of these narrow silos; whypush them back in? We needed a new structure that en-couraged synthesis rather than separation. What we cameup with-a structure based on the five aspects of fhe man-agerial mind - has proved not only powerful in the class-room but insightful in practice, as we hope to demon-strate in this article. We'll first explain how we came upwith the five managerial mind-sets, then we'll discusseach in some depth before concluding with the case forinterweaving the five.

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The Five Minds of a Manager

The Five Managerial Mind-SetsThe Intemational Federation of Red Cross and Red Cres-cent Societies, headquartered in Geneva, has a manage-ment development concern. It worries that it may bedrifting too far toward a fast-action culture. It knows thatit must act quickly in responding to disasters every-where-earthquakes and wars, floods and famines-but italso sees the need to engage in the slower, more delicatetask of building a capacity for action that is careful,thoughtful, and tailored to local conditions and needs.

Many business organizations face a similar problem -they know how to execute, but they are not so adept atstepping back to reflect on their situations. Others facethe opposite predicament: They get so mired in thinkingabout their problems that they can't get things done fastenough. We all know bureaucracies that are great at plan-ning and organizing but slow to respond to market forces,just as we're all acquainted with the nimble companiesthat react to every stimulus, but sloppily, and have to beconstantly fixing things. And then, of course, there arethose that suffer from both afflictions-for example, firmswhose marketing departments are absorbed with grandpositioning statements while their sales forces chaseevery possible deal.

Those two aspects establish the bounds of manage-ment: Everything that every effective manager does issandwiched between action on the ground and reflectionin the abstract. Action without reflection is thoughtless;reflection without action is passive. Every manager hasto find a way to combine these two mind-sets-to func-tion at the point where reflective thinking meets practi-cal doing.

But action and refiection about what? One obvious an-swer is: about collaboration, about getting things done co-operatively with other people-in negotiations, for exam-ple, where a manager cannot act alone. Another answeris that action, refiection, and collaboration have to berooted in a deep appreciation of reality in all its facets. Wecall this mind-set worldly, which the Oxford English Dictio-nary defines as "experienced in life, sophisticated, practi-cal." Finally, action, reflection, and collaboration, as well asworldliness, must subscribe to a certain rationality orlogic; they rely on an analytic mind-set, too.

So we have five sets ofthe managerial mind, five waysin which managers interpret and deal with fhe worldaround them. Fach has a dominant subject, or target, ofits own. For reflection, the subject is the self; there can beno insight without self-knowledge. Collaboration takes

Jonathan Gosling is the director ofthe Centre for LeadershipStudies at the University of Exeter in Exeter, England. HenryMintzberg is the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studiesat McGill University in Montreal and the author of the forth-coming book Managers Not MBAs/rom Berrett-Koehler.

the subject beyond the self, into the manager's networkof relationships. Anaiysis goes a step beyond that, to theorganization; organizations depend on the systematicdecomposition of activities, and that's what analysis is allabout. Beyond the organization lies what we considerthe subject ofthe worldly mind-set, namely context-theworlds around the organization. Finally, the action mind-set pulls everything together through the process ofchange-in self, relationships, organization, and context

The practice of managing, then, involves five per-spectives, which correspond to the five modules of ourprogram:• Managing self the reflective mind-set• Managing organizations: the analytic mind-set• Managing context: the worldly mind-set• Managing relationships: the collaborative mind-set• Managing change: the action mind-setIf you are a manager, this is your world!

Let us make clear several characteristics of this set ofsets. First, we make no claim that our framework is eitherscientific or comprehensive. It simply has proved usefulin our work with managers, including in our master's pro-gram. (For more on the program, see the sidebar "Mind-Sets for Management Development.") Second, we ask youto consider each of these managerial mind-sets as an atti-tude, a frame of mind that opens new vistas. Unless youget into a reflective frame of mind, for example, you can-not open yourself to new ideas. You might not even noticesuch ideas in the first place without a worldly frame ofmind. And, of course, you cannot appreciate the buzz, thevistas, and the opportunities of actions unless you en-gage in them.

Third, a word on our word "mind-sets." We do not use itto set any manager's mind. All of us have had more thanenough of that. Rather, we use the word in the spirit ofa fortune one of us happened to pull out of a Chinesecookie recently: "Get your mind set. Confidence will leadyou on." We ask you to get your mind set around five keyideas. Then, not just confidence but coherence can leadyou on. Think, too, of these mind-sets as mind-5/^hfs-per-spectives. But be aware that, improperly used, they canalso be mine sites. Too much of any of them-obsessive an-alyzing or compulsive collaborating, for instance-and themind-set can blow up in your face.

Managing Self:

The Reflective Mind-SetManagers who are sent off to development courses thesedays often find themselves being welcomed to "bootcamp." This is no country club, they are warned; you'llhave to work hard. But this is wrongheaded. While man-agers certainly don't need a country club atmosphere fordevelopment, neither do they need boot camp. Most man-agers we know already live boot camp every day. Be-

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sides, in real boot camps, sol-diers learn to march and obey,not to stop and think. Thesedays, what managers desper-ately need /5 to stop and think,to step back and reflect thought-fully on their experiences. In-deed, in his book Rules for Radi-cals, Saul Alinsky makes theinteresting point that events, or"happenings," become experi-ence only after they have beenreflected upon thoughtfully:"Most people do not accumu-late a body of experience. Mostpeople go through life under-going a series of happenings,which pass through their sys-tems undigested. Happeningsbecome experiences when theyare digested, when they are re-flected on, related to generaipatterns,and synthesized." ,, -• . .. .~

Unless the meaning is under-stood, managing is mindless.Hence we take reflection to be that space suspended be-tween experience and explanation, where the mindmakes the connections. Imagine yourself in a meetingwhen someone suddenly erupts with a personal rant.You're tempted to ignore or dismiss the outburst-you'veheard, affer all, that the person is having problems athome. But why not use it to reflect on your own reac-tion-whether embarrassment, anger, or frustration-andso recognize some comparable feelings in yourself? Yourown reaction now becomes a learning experience foryou: You have opened a space for imagination, betweenyour experience and your explanation. It can make al! thedifference.

Organizations may not need "mirror people," who seein everything only reflections of their own behavior. Butneither do they need "window people," who cannot seebeyond the images in front of them. They need managerswho see both ways - in a sense, ones who look out thewindow at dawn, to see through their own reflections tothe awakening world outside. "Reflect" in Latin meansto refold, which suggests that attention tums inward sothat it can be turned outward. This means going beyondintrospection. It means looking in so that you can bettersee out in order to perceive a familiar thing in a differentway - a product as a service, maybe, or a customer as apartner. Does that not describe the thinking of the reallysuccessful managers, the Andy Groves ofthe world? Com-pare such people with the Messiers and Lays, who dazzlewith great mergers and grand strategies before burningout their companies.

These days, what managersdesperately need is to stopand think-to step back andreflect thoughtfully ontheir experiences.

Likewise, reflective manag-ers are able to see behind inorder to look ahead. Successful"visions" are not immaculatelyconceived; they are painted,stroke by stroke, out of the ex-periences of the past. Reflective

; managers, in other words, havea healthy respect for history -not just the grand history ofdeals and disasters but also theeveryday history of all the littleactions that make organizationswork. Consider in this regard

Kofi Annan's deep personal understanding ofthe UnitedNations, a comprehension that has been the source of hisability to help move that complex body to a different andbetter place. You must appreciate the past if you wish touse the present to get to a better future.

Managing Organizations:

The Analytical Mind-SetLiterally, analysis means to "let loose" (from the Greekana, meaning"up"and/yef>?, meaning"loosen"). Analysisloosens up complex phenomena by breaking them intocomponent parts-by decomposing them.

Analysis happens everywhere - in context (industryanalysis), with relationships (360-degree assessments),and so on. But it is especially related to organization. Yousimply can't get organized without analysis, especially ina large company. Good analysis provides a language fororganizing; it allows people to share an understanding ofwhat is driving their efforts; it provides measures for per-formance. And organizational structure itself is funda-mentally analytic-it is a means of decomposition to es-tablish the division of labor. Just look at any organizationchart, with all the boxes neatly lined up.

Picture the modem manager in an office in a tall build-ing, looking down on the grid ofthe city below and acrossat the offices of companies in other buildings. From thisperspective, the manager does not see individual peopleso much as systems of organization, power, and commu-nication. Turning around, that manager is surrounded by

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the plush paraphemalia of his or her own company, thefruits of many people's tireless work on structures and sys-tems and techniques. All of this represents analysis in theconventional sense: order and decomposition. How issuch a manager to escape the analytic mind-set?

We prefer a different question: How is the manager toget truly inside the analytic mind-set, beyond the super-ficialities of obvious analysis, into the essential meaningsof structures and systems? The key to analyzing effec-tively, in our view, is to get beyond conventional ap-proaches in order to appreciate how analysis works andwhat effect it has on the organization.

Consider three related tasks, one simple, one compli-cated, one complex. Building a pleasure boat can be rela-tiveiy straightforward-it's about such things as the ratioof displacement to length. Building an aircraft carrier isfar more complicated, involving the coordination of allkinds of subsystems and supply networks. Yet even herethe component parts can be readily understood and thenecessary behaviors made rather predictable. But a deci-sion on whether or not to deploy that aircraff carrier canhe truly complex: Who is to say with any certainty whatis the right thing to do, or evenwhat is the best thing under thecircumstances?

Making that kind of complexdecision means standing aboveshallow analysis and easy tech-nique - just running the num-bers-and going deeper into theanalytic mind-set. You have totake into account soff data, in-cluding the values underlying such choices. Deepanalysis does not seek to simplify complex deci-sions, but to sustain the complexity while main-taining the organization's capacity to take action.That was the great power of Winston Churchill'srhetoric during World War 11. His simple expres-sions captured the complexity that was GreatBritain and the war in which it was engaged.

We have come across examples of deep analy-sis from managers participating in our own pro-gram who were being forced into obvious deci-sions by shallow analyses: Close the plant, speedup a slow project. After studying the analyticmind-set during the second module of our pro-gram, they went back to their jobs and probedmore deeply. They analyzed the analyses of oth-ers-where these people were coming from, whatdata and assumptions they were using. They dugout other sorts of information that didn't make itinto the conventional analyses and found limita-tions in the techniques used. Most important,they recognized biases in their own thinking. Asa result, they saw things differently, encouraged

others to change course, and helped resolve problems.Was this analysis or reflection? It was reflective analysis.

The problem for many managers today, as well as thebusiness schools that train them, is not a lack of analysishut too much of it-at least, too much conventional analy-sis. This is exemplified by that popular metaphor in fi-nance ofthe tennis player who watches the Scoreboardwhile missing the ball (much like the marketer who stud-ies the crowd while missing the sale). The trick in the an-alytic mind-set is to appreciate scores and crowds whilewatching the ball.

Managing Context:

The Worldly Mind-SetWe live on a globe that from a distance looks pretty uni-form. "Globalization" sees the world from a distance, as-suming and encouraging a certain homogeneity of be-havior. Is that what we want from our managers?

A closer look reveals something rather different. Farfrom being uniform, this world is made up of all kinds ofworlds. Should we not, then, be encouraging our manag-

From Globalto WorldlyBy getting out of their offices and appreciating what the worldlooks like from the places where products are made and customersare served, managers can become truly worldly instead of merelyglobal. The worldly perspective acknowledges that life on this globeis made up of all kinds of worlds.

The Global View The Worldly View

what matters is generalizationsabout markets, values, andmanagement practices.

Local consequences are ofless importance than overalleconomic performance.Global companies are notreally responsible for localconsequences.

Traveling around the world,we see a blur of differences.

The world is convergingtoward a common culture.

What matters is attentionpaid to particular responsesto specific conditions.

Local consequences are a keyindicator of performance, whichhas to add social as well as eco-nomic value. Companies areresponsible for the local conse-quences of their actions.

Landing in different places, wejoin a plurality of worldviews.

This is a world made upof edges and boundaries,like a patchwork.

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How

a l l

ers to be more worldly, more experienced in life, in bothsophisticated and practical ways? In other words, shouldwe not be getting into worlds beyond our own-into otherpeople's circumstances, habits, cultures - so that we canbetter know our own world? To paraphrase T.S. Fliot'sfamous words, should we not explore ceaselessly in orderto retum home and know the place for the flrst time?That to us is the worldly mind-set.

Being worldly does not require global coverage, just asglobal coverage does not a worldly mind-set make. In-deed, global coverage does not even ensure a global per-spective, given that the managers of so many "global"companies are rooted in the culture ofthe headquarters'country. But there are companies that seem to be reason-ably global as well as worldly-a Shell, perhaps.Shell has, of course, long covered the globe. Butbecause of social pressures, including a head-quarters that has always had to work across twocultures (Dutch and British), it has struck us inpersonal contacts as rather worldly. By this wemean that the company tailors and blends itsparts across the world, socially and environ-mentally as well as economically. It must flndand extract oil without violating the rights ofthe people under whose territories the oil sits,and it has to refine and sell that oil in ways that are re-spectful of the local environment. That may seem clearenough today, but think about what companies like Shellwent through to get there.

We conclude from this that while global managers mayspend a lot of time in the air, and not just literally, they he-come worldly when their feet are planted firmly on theground of eclectic experience. That means getting out oftheir offices, beyond the towers, to spend time whereproducts are produced, customers served, and environ-ments threatened. (For a comparison of the global andthe worldly worldviews, see the exhibit "From Global toWorldly.")

Of course, shifting from a global to a worldly perspec-tive is not easy. In James Clavell's novel Shogun, a Japa-nese woman tells her British lover, who is perplexed bythe strange world of seventeenth-century Japan intowhich he has fallen, "It's all so simple, Anjin-san. justchange your concept ofthe worid." Just!

But maybe it's not quite as hard as it seems. One way tobegin (as in the novel) is through immersion in a strangecontext: Get into someone else's world as a mirror to yourown. That is why we hold our program's module on theworldly mind-set in India: For all but the Indian manag-ers, India is not just another world, but, in a sense, other-worldly. Being there, especially among fellow managersfrom Indian companies, takes the non-Indian participantspast the nice abstractions of economic, political, and so-cial differences, down onto the streets, where these dif-ferences come alive.

"How can you possibly drive in this traffic?" an Ameri-can marketing manager from Lufthansa, shaken up dur-ing her ride from the airport, asked an Indian professor.He replied,"I just join the flow." Leaming can begin! Thatis not chaos on the streets of India, but another kind oflogic. When you realize it, you have become that muchmore worldly.

We ask the participants in our program, after they goback to work between sessions, to write reflection pa-pers on what they've leamed at the modules. Affer theIndia module, a Russian manager from the Red Cross,with his own share of third-world experiences, wroteabout seeing a pile of tires with a huge black cross on it:"Black Cross: The Clinic for Tires" read the sign. He was

Be global, managers are told, andbe local. Change and maintain order.

is anyone supposed to reconcilethis? The fact is, no one can.

struck hy a symbol so familiar to him used in such a radi-cally different context. He wrote: "Once again India [hasreminded me] how interdependent, similar, and differentat the same time are our worlds." This is the worldly mind-set in action: seeing differently out to reflect differentlyin. We might say that the worldly mind-set puts the re-flective one into context.

In our view, to manage context is to manage on theedges, between the organization and the various worldsthat surround it - cultures, industries, companies. WhatRay Raphael has written about "Edges," in his book bythat title, is germane to every manager:

Many of the most interesting things, say the biolo-gists, happen on the Edges-on the interface betweenthe woods and the field, the land and the sea. There, liv-ing organisms encounter dynamic conditions that giverise to untold variety....

Variety, perhaps, but there is tension as well. Theflora of the meadows, for example, as they approachthe woodlands, find themselves coping with increas-ingly unfavorable conditions: the sunlight they needmight be lacking, and the soil no longer feels right.There is also the problem of competition with alienspecies of trees and shmbs. The Edges, in short, mightabound with life, but each living form must fight forits own.

No wonder managers must be worldly. They haveto mediate those wide zones where organization meetscontext - not just, for example, "customers" acting in

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"markets," however "differenti-ated," but all those particularpeople in particular places buy-ing and using products in theirown particular ways.

Managing Relationships:

The CollaborativeMind-SetIt need hardly be said that man-aging is about working with peo-ple - not just as bosses and sub-ordinates but, more important,as colleagues and partners. Yetdespite all the rhetoric aboutcollaboration, in the West, atleast, we often take a narrowview. Thanks to the influence ofeconomic theory, we see peopleas independent actors, detach-able human "resources" or "as-sets" that can be moved around,bought and sold, combined, and"downsized." That is not the col-laborative mind-set.

In fact, our own original defi-nition of the collaborative mind-set got a jolt when our Japanesecolleagues began to design theprogram's fourth module. It hadbeen called Managing People.But they pointed out that a trulycollaborative mind-set does not involve managiple so much as the relationships among people, in teamsand projects as well as across divisions and alliances. Get-ting into a tmly collaborative mind-set means gettingbeyond empowerment-a word implying that the peoplewho know the work best must somehow receive the bless-ing of their managers to do it - and into commitment. Italso means getting away from the currently popularheroic style of managing and moving toward a more en-gaging style.

Engaging managers listen more than they talk; theyget out of their offices to see and feel more than they re-main in them to sit and figure. By being worldly them-selves, they foster collaboration among others. And theydo less controlling, thus allowing other people to be ingreater control of their own work. If "I deem, so that youdo" is the implicit motto of the heroic manager, then forthe engaging manager it is "We dream, so that we do." OurJapanese colleagues call this "leadership in the back-ground"-it lets as many ordinary people as possible lead.(For a comparison of heroic and engaging management,see the exhibit "TWo Ways to Manage.")

If you picture yourself ontop of a network,looking downon it, then you are out of it.How can you possibly manageits relationships that way?

When John Kotter was asked ifthe members ofthe Harvard Busi-ness School class of 1974, whosecareers he followed in his bookThe New Rules, were team players,he replied, "I think it fair to saythat these people want to createthe team and lead it to some gloryas opposed to being a memberof a team that's being driven bysomebody else." That is not thecollaborative mind-set. Having torun the team may be necessary attimes - although we suspect it'sneeded far less often than mostpeople think - but it hardly rep-resents a collaborative point ofview, nor does it foster team-work. Leaders don't do most ofthe things that their organiza-tions get done; they do not evenmake them get done. Rather, theyhelp to establish the structures,conditions, and attitudes throughwhich things get done. And thatrequires a collaborative mind-set.

We talk a great deal about net-works these days, as well as teams,task forces, alliances, and knowl-edge work. Yet we still picturemanagers on "top." Well, then, pic-ture yourself on top of a network,looking down on it. That puts you

out of it; how can you possibly manage its relationshipsthat way? To be in a collaborative mind-set means to beinside, involved, to manage throughout But it has a moreprofound meaning, too - to get management beyondmanagers, to distribute it so that responsibility flows nat-urally to whoever can take the initiative and pull thingstogether. Think of self-managing teams, of slaink works;indeed, think of who "manages" the World Wide Web.

Managing Change:

The Action Mind-SetImagine your organization as a chariot pulled by wildhorses. (That may be easy for you to do!) These horsesrepresent the emotions, aspirations, and motives of allthe people in the organization. Holding a steady courserequires just as much skill as steering around to a newdirection.

Philosophers from Plato to Vivekenanda have used thismetaphor to describe the need to harness emotional en-ergy; it works well for management, too. An action mind-set, especially at senior levels, is not about whipping the

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horses into a frenzy, careening hither and yon. It is aboutdeveloping a sensitive awareness of the terrain and ofwhat the team is capable of doing in it and thereby help-ing to set and maintain direction, coaxing everyone along.

Action, and especially change, need no introduction, ofcourse. Everybody today understands them and the needfor them. That's the problem.

There is now an overwhelming emphasis on action atthe expense of reflection. The Red Cross Federation isunusual, not in experiencing this problem, but in beingaware of it. In addition, peo-ple are obsessed with changethese days. We are told, re-lentlessly, that we live intimes of great upheaval, thateverything is changing, so wehad better be in a constantstate of alert. Change or else.

Well, then, look around.What do you see that has changed re-cently? Your clothing? (Your grandpar-ents wore cotton and wool; they too but-toned buttons.) Your car? (It uses thebasic technology of the Model T.) Theairplane you're flying in? (That technol-ogy is newer: the flrst commercial jetaircraft took flight in 1952.) Your tele-phone? (That changed - about ten yearsago. Unless, of course, you are not usinga cellular phone.)

Our point is not that nothing is chang-ing. No, something is always changing.Right now it is information technology.But many other things are not changingat all - and these we don't notice (likebuttons). We tend to focus on what ischanging and conclude that everythingis. That is hardly a reflective mind-set,and it is detrimental as well to the actionmind-set. We have to sober up to the re-ality that change is not pervasive, andthat the phenomenon of change is notnew. If the reflective mind-set has to re-spect history, then the action mind-setcould use a little humility.

Change has no meaning without con-tinuity. There is a name for everythingchanging all the time: anarchy. No onewants to live with that, certainly no or-ganization that wishes to survive. Busi-nesses are judged by the products theysell and the services they render, not thechanges they make. So change cannot bemanaged without continuity. Accord-ingly, the trick in the action mind-set is to

mobilize energy around those things that need changing,while being careful to maintain the rest. And make nomistake about it, managing continuity is no easier thanmanaging change. Remember those wild horses.

The dominant view of managing change is Cartesian:Action results from deliberate strategies, carefully planned,that tmfold as systematically managed sequences of deci-sions. That is the analytic mind-set, not the action one.Monsanto went into genetically engineered agriculturewith that approach, with its strategy all worked out in

Two Waysto ManageHeroic management(based on self)

Engaging management(based on collaboration)

Managers are important people,separate from those who developproducts and deliver services.

Managers are important to the extentthat they help other people do theimportant work of developingproducts and delivering services.

The higher "up" these managers go,the more important they become.At the "top," the chief executive isthe corporation.

An organization is an interactingnetwork, not a vertical hierarchy.Effective leaders work throughout;they do not sit on top.

Down the hierarchy comes thestrategy-clear, deliberate, andbold-emanating from the chief,who makes the dramatic moves.Everyone else "implements."

Out ofthe network emerge strategies,as engaged people solve little prob-lems that grow Into big initiatives.

Implementation is the problembecause, while the chief embraceschange, most others resist it. Thatis why outsiders must be favoredover insiders.

Implementation is the problembecause it cannot be separated fromformulation. That is why committedinsiders are necessary to come upwith the key changes.

To manage is to make decisions andallocate resources-including humanresources. Managing thus meansanalyzing, often calculating, basedon facts from reports.

To manage is to bring out the positiveenergy that exists naturaily withinpeople. Managing thus means inspir-ing and engaging, based on judgmentthat is rooted in context.

Rewards for increasing performancego to the leaders. What matters iswhat's measured-shareholdervalue, in particular.

Rewards for making the organizationa better place go to everyone. Humanvalues, many of which cannot bemeasured, matter.

Leadership is thrust upon thosewho thrust their will upon others.

Leadership is a sacred trust earnedthrough the respect of others.

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advance. With control of seed varieties and certain pesti-cides and fertilizers, it could bring an entire ecosystemto the market. And it had the research capacity and pres-ence worldwide to do it. So it set about a series of bril-liantly conceived acquisitions and effectively positionedthe company to be the Microsoft of agribusiness. But thefanners and consumers weren't there - they were moreenthusiastic about continuity at that point-and the plancollapsed.

Change, to be successful, cannot follow some mecha-nistic schedule of steps, of formulation followed by im-

plementation. Action and reflection have to blend in anatural flow. And that has to include collaboration. SatishKumar, the director of the Schumacher Institute in theUnited Kingdom, put it nicely in the title of his latestbook. You Are Therefore 1 Am: A Declaration of Depen-dence. We had better be reflectively collaborative, as wellas analytically worldly, if we wish to accomplish effec-tive change.

Of course, energized action is necessary too, but thatdoesn't mean being hyperactive or flddling around end-lessly with structure. It means remaining curious, alert.

Mind-Sets forManagement DevelopmentIN 1996, when we founded the InternationalMasters Program in Practicing Managementwith colleagues from around the world, wedeveloped the managerial mind-sets as a newway to structure management education anddevelopment. Managers are sent to the IMPMby their companies, preferably in groups offour or five. They stay on the job, coming intoour classrooms for five modules of two weekseach, one for each ofthe mind-sets, over aperiod of 16 months.

We open with a module on the reflectivemind-set. The module is located at LancasterUniversity In the reflective atmosphere ofnorthern Engiand-the nearby hills and lakesinspire reflection on the purpose of life andwork. Then it is on to McGill University inMontreal, where the grid-like regularity ofthecity reflects the energy and order ofthe ana-lytic mind-set. The worldly mind-set on contextcomes alive atthe Indian Institute of Manage-ment in Bangalore, where new technologiesjostle ancient traditions on the crowdedstreets. Then comes the collaborative mind-set,hosted by faculty in Japan, where collaborationhas been the key to managerial innovations,and Korea, where alliances and partnershipshave become the basis for business growth.Last is the action mind-set module, located atInsead in France, where emerging trends fromaround the world convert into lessons for man-agerial action.

So our locations not only teach the mind-sets but also encourage the participating man-

agers to live them. And so have we, in the veryconception ofthe program.

Our approach to management developmentis fundamentally reflective. We believe manag-ers need to step back from the pressures of theirjobs and reflect thoughtfully on their experi-ences. We as faculty members bring concepts;the participants bring experience. Learningoccurs where these meet- in individual heads,small groups, and all together. Our 50-50 rulesays that half the classroom time should beturned over to the participants, on their agendas.

The program is fully collaborative allaround,There is no lead school; much oftheorganizational responsibility is distributed.Likewise, the faculty's relationship with theparticipants is collaborative. And faculty mem-bers work closely with the participating com-panies, which over the past eight years haveincluded Mean, BT, EDF Croup and GazdeFrance, Fujitsu, the International Red CrossFederation, LG, Lufthansa, Matsushita, Mo-torola, Royal Bank of Canada, and Zeneca.

We think of our setting as being especiallyworldly, because the participating managersandfacultyhosttheir colleagues at home, intheir own cultures, and are guests abroad. Wealso believe that the program's reflective orien-tation allows us to probe into analysis moredeeply than in regular education and work.

Finally, our own purpose is action: We seekfundamental change in management educa-tion worldwide-to help change businessschools into true schools of management.

62 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

The Five M i n d s o f a Manager

experimental. Changing is a leaming process, and so ismaintaining course. We may thinl< of stasis as the normand change as driven, but it doesn't have to be that way.Active members of an organization may resist change im-posed on them because they understand that the changewould be dysfunctional. And they in tum may engage in"silent change" of their own, continually re-creating op-erations for better performance.

Weaving the Mind-Sets TogetherClearly, these five mind-sets do not represent hard-and-fast categories. We need distinct labels for them, but theyobviously overlap, and they are more than mere words.They are more than metaphors too, but a metaphor canhelp us understand how they come together.

Imagine the mind-sets as threads and the manager asweaver. Effective performance means weaving eachmind-set over and under the others to create a fine, sturdycloth. You analyze, then you act. But that does not workas expected, so you reflect. You act some more, then findyourself blocked, realizing that you cannot do it alone.You have to collaborate. But to do that, you have to getinto the world of others. Then more analysis follows, to ar-ticulate the new insights. Now you act again - and so itgoes, as the cloth of your effort forms.

But one piece of cloth is not enough. An organizationis a collective entity that achieves common purpose whenthe cloths of its various managers are sewn together intouseful garments - when the organization's managers col-laborate to combine their reflective actions in analytic,worldly ways.

We have been emphasizing the need for all managersto get deeply into all five mind-sets. But many manag-ers naturally tilt to one or another, depending on their sit-uations and personal inclinations. Some people are morereflective than others, some more action oriented, somemore analytic, and so on. Finance and marketing havetheir share of calculating managers (lots of analysis),salespeople can sometimes be a little too worldly, thosefrom HR a little too enthusiastic about collaboration. Sothe weaving often has to be collaborative, too, like thesewing, as managers come to understand one another andcombine their strengths.

Companies have been quite concerned about seam-lessness in recent years. Yet we all appreciate seams thatare nicely sewn, just as we appreciate mind-sets that arenicely combined. Effective organizations tailor handsomeresults out of the woven mind-sets of their managers. ^

Reprint R0311C; HBR OnPoint 5364To order, see page 141.

"Money's out ofthe question. How about a cup of sugar?"

NOVEMBER 2003 63

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