Henry Mintzberg has been an academic most of his working life (after a stint in Operational Research at the Canadian National Railways). Currently he is Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, where he has been since graduating with a doctorate from MIT in 1968. (His undergraduate degree was from McGill in Mechanical Engineering.) he also hold the title of Visiting Scholar at INSEAD in Fontainbleau, France.
He devotes himself largely to his writing and research, over the years especially about managerial work, strategy formation, and forms of organizing. he is completing a book called Developing Managers, not MBAs, and am preparing a series of essays to be published under the title Managing Quietly, also a short political pamphlet called Getting Past Smith and Marx: Toward a Balanced Society.
He has worked for much of the past seven years or so, in collaboration with colleagues from Canada, England, France, India, and Japan, to develop new approaches to management education. The International Masters Program in Practicing Management has been running for five years now, and they are launching the Advanced Leadership Program, both rather novel ways to help managers learn from their own experience. He teaches in these programs and supervise doctoral students. He rarely do speeches, however, except to convey a particular message or to visit a place he wish to see.
In recent years, he has shifted a bit toward more general writing. He has done some newspaper articles, and he likes to write short stories, some of which are available on his web site. He hopes to publish a collection of them soon, entitled Reflection from the Window. And he has just completed a book called Why he Hate Flying, a spoof of all the foibles of flying, and of managing.
In all, he have written about 120 articles and about 10 books. Honors have included election as an Officer of the Order of Canada and l'Ordre national du Quebec, and selection as Distinguished Scholar for the year 2000 by the Academy of Management.
He may spend his public life dealing with organizations, but he spends his private life escaping from them. This he does on a bicycle (preferably on quiet roads in Europe), up mountains, or in the Laurentian wilderness of Canada atop cross-country skis and in a canoe. He like to do this with his wife Sasha and his daughters Susie (now 32) and Lisa (now 30).
Tracking Strategies: Toward a General Theory
The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: Reconceiving Roles for Planning, Plans, Planners
The Strategy Process: European Edition 2nd Ed.
Why I Hate Flying: Tales for the Tormented Traveler
Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations
Strategy Bites Back: It Is Far More, And Less, Than You Ever Imagined...
Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management