Analysis of The Five Minds of a Manager Article - Annotated Bibliography Example

Gosling, G., and Mintzberg, H., 2003. “The five minds of a manager”, Harvard Business Review, 81(11) pp. 54-63  This article is considered as one of the timeless contributions to the subject of management and how it elaborates upon the mindsets required for a manager to perform effectively. The article discusses five important mindsets a manager must possess in order to accomplish various tasks at the organizational level. Organizations need to execute different things at different times but the appropriateness of the methods and mindset required by the managers may be different for each of the situation. The five mindsets of managers is basically a collection of set of organizing principles which a manager must adapt in different situations. What is critical about this article is the assumption that the authors have actually attempted to generalize the different organizing principles applied by the managers. Though authors have focused upon managing self, organization, context, relationships and change within an organization however, for a manager to master all the traits at one time could be difficult task. As authors suggested that the managers must have to bring all mindsets to work together it is therefore relatively difficult for the managers to assume all the roles and perform them at their best. Managers may have to make a trade-off between certain mindsets as their actions must be based upon what is exactly in the best interest of the organization by taking into account the cost benefit analysis of their decisions and actions. Authors argue that all five mindsets must be weaved together to achieve the balance however this balancing act may not be possible to achieve. Shenkman, M, 2005, Mentor don’t just manage, your next round of leaders” Handbook of Business Strategy, 6(1) pp.231-234 This article discussed about the mindset required to actually mentor the employees and help them to grow. The author has actually outlined that in order to properly groom the successors, organizations actually let the time pass on and fail to actually groom the employees and successors. The approach taken by the managers may not be suitable enough to actually allow successors to develop more maturity to assume the positions of responsibility in future. Author therefore has argued that to properly mentor the employees for the next level in their career, it is important that mentors must assume a special mindset which can foster such mentoring within the organization. This mindset requires slow, subtle and forgiving mindset which can actually allow managers to accommodate the mistakes of the followers and actually help them to correct their mistakes. This article is limited in the sense that it presents just one side of the argument and provides details about how executives can actually develop the mindsets and skills to practice mentorship. The article lacks the application of the new mindset at broader level of organization and just focuses on how the development of a new set of skills can develop a new mindset to mentor their employees for next career moves and succession planning. Shoes that walk giant into a trap: How managerial mindset can turn success into failure , Strategic Direction , 22 (9) pp.11-13 This case study and article provides a practical example of failure of British Shoe Corporation because of its inability to cultivate and develop an analytical mindset of their managers. Due to lack of the stronger mental model, firm actually failed to fill the learning gaps and resultantly organization went to become a failure despite being one of the leading organizations of its time in shoe industry. This research has empirically proved that the overall mental model of the organization as well as the mindset possessed by the managers effect the learning ability of the organization. By focusing on developing the right mindset, managers can actually help their organizations to avoid the failures as witnessed by the British Shoe Corporation. The stronger part of this article is based upon the fact that it has been able to demonstrate the practical importance of how right mindset can actually save an organization from being destroyed. Managers therefore must need to focus on the development of a mindset which can foster the creativity and help organization to propel ahead. This could however, only be achieved when managers are able to enough to improve the learning capabilities of their organizations and help them to learn from the mistakes. This article however, failed to provide a broader view of how a typical mindset could be avoided in order to make the organization more secure from the failure. The overall sample size is small too as the article focuses only on one organization rather than on different organizations to provide more empirical credibility to the claims made in the article. Butcher, D & Clarke, M 2003 "Redefining managerial work: smart politics", Management Decision, 41(5), pp.477 - 487 This article focuses on the role of managers and how despite leading international organizations, managers are still looking to find their perfect roles within the organization. Managers will have to take care of diversified interests of different stakeholder groups. Such complex web of inter-relationships between different stakeholders actually makes it difficult for managers to actually adapt a particular mindset to achieve organizational objectives. This article is therefore important in this sense that it outlines the way managers perceive their roles within increasingly complex organizations. Author argues that this lack of understanding of the interests of different stakeholders is due to the lack of a proper mindset and inability to understand the difference between what managers and why they actually do it. It is therefore critical for managers to develop legitimate political mindset in order to deal with different sets of stakeholders. According to authors, this will actually allow the managers to redefine their work and role besides providing an opportunity to the organizations to relook into their practices and whether such practices are good or not. Though the overall strength of this article lies in its ability to provide a comprehensive and better review of the existing practices and what is needed to be done in order to correct the situation. It however, fails to offer a comprehensive understanding of how the combination of different mindsets can actually work in the benefit of the organization. References Gosling, G., and Mintzberg, H., 2003. “The five minds of a manager”, Harvard Business Review, 81(11) pp. 54-63  Shenkman, M, 2005, Mentor don’t just manage, your next round of leaders” Handbook of Business Strategy, 6(1) pp.231-234 Shoes that walk giant into a trap: How managerial mindset can turn success into failure , Strategic Direction , 22 (9) pp.11-13 Butcher, D & Clarke, M 2003 "Redefining managerial work: smart politics", Management Decision, 41(5), pp.477 - 487 Read More