Mintzberg: 15 self-study questions for managers to reflect on

In the excellent book Simply Managing, Henry Mintzberg presents five “managerial mindsets” that can lead to healthy, successful teams. One of these is reflection. Managers, he argues, will improve faster if they reflect.

To encourage reflection, he shares 15 self-study questions for managers. These questions can help you improve your company’s management development and training programs. I have quoted them in their entirety below from Simply Managing:

1. Where do I get my information? And how? Can I make greater use of my contacts? How can get I others to provide me with the information I need? Do I have sufficiently powerful mental models of the things I must understand?
2. What information do I disseminate? How can I get more information to others so they can make better decisions?
3. Do I tend to act before enough information is in? Or do I wait so long after the information is in that opportunities pass me by?
4. What pace of change am I asking my unit to tolerate? Is this balanced with the needed stability?
5. Am I sufficiently well-informed to pass judgment on the proposals submitted to me? Can I leave final authorization for more of these proposals to others?
6. What are my intentions for my unit? Should I make them more explicit to better the decisions of others? Or do I need flexibility to change them at will?
7. Am I sufficiently sensitive to the influence of my actions and my managerial style in general? Do I find an appropriate balance between encouragement and pressure? Do I stifle initiative?
8. Do I spend too much time or too little maintaining my external relationships? Are there certain people I should get to know better?
9. In scheduling, am I just reacting to the pressures of the moment? Do I find an appropriate mix of activities, or do I over-concentrate on what I find interesting? Am I more efficient with particular kinds of work at particular times of day or week?
10. Do I overwork? What effect does my workload have on my efficiency and my family? Should I force myself to take breaks, or reduce pace of activity?
11. Am I too superficial in what I do? Can I really shift moods as quickly and frequently as my schedule requires? Should I decrease the amount of fragmentation and interruption?
12. Am I a slave to the action and excitement of my job so that I am no longer able to concentrate on issues? Should I spend more time reading and probing deeply into certain issues?
13. Do I use the different media appropriately? Do I know how to make the most of written communication and email? Am I a prisoner of the pace of email?
14. Do I rely excessively on face to face communication, thereby putting all but a few of my reports at an informational disadvantage? Do I spend enough time observing activities firsthand?
15. Do my obligations consume all my time? How can I free myself from them to ensure I am taking the unit where I want it to go? How can I turn my obligations to my advantage?

What do you think of these questions? How can you use them to improve your own effectiveness as a manager? How can you use them to improve your company’s management development programs?

Other posts on Henry Mintzberg’s work:

• 10 managerial roles
• How to develop managers effectively
• Judge (don’t measure) the effectiveness of manager development programs
• Management effectiveness can only be judged in context

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