Therefore, the collaborative mindset calls for breaking with the heroic style
of management and implementing a more approachable on. Managers practicing
this style spend more time listening than talking; they interact with their
employees and do not remain isolated in their respective roles. The collaborative
manager is an insider, who gets involved and manages holistically. The manager
gets involved, but does not make himself or herself the center of attention.
Implementing the collaborative mindset means transferring the responsibility
and the initiative to employees, and means that employees regain the power over
themselves and their work. As Mintzberg envisions the function of managers,
they contribute structures to create the conditions and attitudes needed to
complete tasks, but do not do everything themselves. In Japan this style of
leadership is referred to as “leadership in the background”; Mintzberg calls it
“managing quietly.”- The action mindset
Mintzberg compares an enterprise with a carriage pulled by wild horses.
These horses represent the emotions, ambitions and motives of people at the com-
pany. Keeping the course requires a lot of skills, such as changing directions.
An action-oriented mindset means that the manager does not race the horses
through a zigzag course with the help of a whip; instead they develop a feeling
for the terrain and the distance ahead. The manager must know how to get the
team through the terrain while maintaining the proper course.
Leading requires action. However, without significant consideration of the
actions to be taken, acting can be dangerous. The insistence on action at the
expense of reflection should be avoided in Mintzberg’s view. Furthermore,
striving for constant change is not effective in the long run. As Mintzberg states,
the action mindset requires modesty, because in the long run a company is eva-
luated by the number of products it sells, and not by the number of changes it
went through.
Mintzberg refers to the environment of constant change as anarchy. Changes
cannot be successfully implemented without continuity and structure. The action-
oriented mindset carefully considers what really has to be changed, and makes
sure that everything else remains the same. The objective is not change for
change’s sake but to be ready, curious, watchful and eager to gain new experi-
ences. In Chap. 3 this topic will be revisited in more detail. For the time being let
me say that in my opinion, leading means managing changes on the one hand,
and providing orientation and a sense of security on the other.
These five mindsets are not clearly definable categories; their boundaries are
flexible. As Mintzberg describes it, the manager is a weaver who weaves together
threads from the different mindsets. When a company’s managers cooperate with
each another in an analytic and worldly way, blending their reflected actions
together, the basis for a successful organization has been provided. “Successful
enterprises produce convincing results from the interwoven mindsets of their
managers” (Gosling and Mintzberg 2004, p. 59).
56 2 Occupation or Calling: What Makes for Good Leadership?