Mintzberg On What Business Can Learn From Family Systems

Forbes

19-05-2025

From hierarchy to humanity: the future of work through a systems' lens.
Kyra Odell contributed to this story.
In many ways, today's workplace thrives on human energy. Gone are the days when businesses operated like machines—now, they're starting to look much more like families, with their increased emphasis on interpersonal connections and emotional awareness. Contrary to what many might initially believe, this is far from a liability: rather, such a shift might be the most powerful tool for building healthier, creative, and resilient organizations in an increasingly uncertain world.
According to Susan Mintzberg— a recent graduate from McGill University's PhD program in social work and the daughter of famed management academic and author Henry Mintzberg—looking at businesses the same way she approaches family conflicts in her field practice could yield immense benefit.
Having held careers in photojournalism, community mental health counselling, and academic research and instruction, Mintzberg has always maintained a passion for helping others grow, develop, and overcome obstacles. Her interest in the intersections between families and individual mental health was sparked when she began working at a community crisis center. Having experienced the difficulties of having a family member struggling with mental health herself only fueled her drive. 'I was kind of living it…and so I knew what the system was. I knew some of the issues. I didn't get into mental health because of it, but I think it's what kept me going.'
Before returning to her postgraduate studies, Mintzberg spent years working in community mental health, providing counseling, crisis education, and psychoeducation services. Most often, her cases centered around families 'where someone in the family had severe mental illness, but often didn't want or realize they needed help…the family just was at wits' end and didn't know what to do,' she says.
In these situations, she focused not solely on the struggling individual, but also on the whole family as a system. This perspective helped identify that a child acting out was most frequently the result of some larger dysfunction within the family—such as tension between parents—instead of some inherent issue with the child. To solve the individual problem, she believes, we must consider the whole system.
Mintzberg carried these early learnings into her postgraduate studies in social work, where she further expanded on the importance of the family unit in treating individual mental health issues. When her focus shifted towards the larger institutionalized mental health system, she began to ask, 'why aren't families more regularly involved in mental health treatment?'
She found the answer to this problem in the way we define expertise within any given field of study—where we often see expertise as something held only by the experts. Most of her research and field experience, however, indicated that the family also had 'an expertise that is not recognized' in mental health treatment, and the reason 'we're not engaging or collaborating with families more is because we don't recognize what they're bringing.'
To build and maintain more effective systems, Mintzberg learned, we must first expand our understanding of who holds valuable knowledge and begin treating lived experience as its own kind of particularly powerful expertise.
As fascinating and undeniably valuable as Susan's work is, how can it translate into the world of business? According to her, the answer is quite simple: looking at systems instead of individuals, and considering every form of 'expertise,' do not have to be limited only to mental health—rather, they can be easily applied to 'society at large.'
In any field, whether that be policy, education, or business, Susan's approach can yield great benefits, simply by broadening our perspectives and encouraging adaptability.
When there arises a problem within a team or an organization, we have a tendency to single out one person as the source of dysfunction and concentrate our efforts on dealing only with that individual.
'It's so easy to pinpoint that one person, and you bring in HR, you bring the manager, you pull that person out, and look at that—the problem's still persevering,' Mintzberg says.
She notes that although individuals may contribute to problems, their behavior often signals deeper issues within the system.
The pinpointed person is commonly responding to a bigger problem—whether that be within the management, the leader of the team's attitude towards leading, or another structural deficiency, she says. This is not merely to excuse the problematic individual's behavior and allow it to continue, but instead just to be looking at things more broadly. If the issue really is rooted in the system, getting rid of one person will not have any effect—the same problem is likely to just crop up again elsewhere. In short, instead of trying (and often failing) to put a band-aid on a bullet wound by blaming one person for a much larger issue, we need to start becoming more open to changing these systems themselves to adapt to the ever-changing demands of our hectic world.
Mintzberg sees another possible parallel between her research and the realities of business when it comes to expertise. In the same way that she believes mental health experts should consider and value the unique expertise of families, so too should businesses and organizations incorporate the less conventional forms of expertise supplied by their employees into their decision-making. Too often, decisions are made solely by upper management, with too little consideration of 'the people on the front lines,' says Mintzberg.
In our current 'VUCA' (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world, where circumstances seem to shift second-by-second, these archaic strategies of alienated, top-down management have little actual value. As a result, decisions often suffer from being 'detached from what's really going on,' she says. 'You get all these people needing to do stuff in their jobs that they either don't agree with or that they know isn't going to work, because they haven't been consulted,' she continues.
For her, to truly thrive in today's fast-paced environment, we must change our ideas about 'expertise': it is not something held only by CEOs or those with sophisticated degrees, but rather something that any individual with front-line experience of the real world—whether that be in mental health or business—can bring to the table.
Mintzberg's insights gesture towards a wider movement in the world of business; one of heightened awareness and sensitivity towards the importance of mental health. This is largely thanks to the pandemic, which highlighted the topic as a primary issue not only in one's personal life, but further as a necessary consideration within organizations and their management.
Furthermore, she does not limit the discussion only to mental illnesses to being unwell. Instead, she sees the importance of everyday feelings and attitudes, particularly in a working environment. 'Are people going into work and are they feeling heard? Are they content in their job? Do they feel that the effort they're putting in is worth their while?' asks Mintzberg.
'[Without these elements], you're just not going to be satisfied in what you're doing, and that has a huge impact on people's mental health and then has an impact on the mental health of the team,' she says.
Organizations that discount employee expertise and refuse to address systemic issues risk not only limited adaptability but also losing valuable insights from younger generations who prioritize mental wellbeing in the workplace.
Leadership plays the crucial role in transformation—just as parents model healthy emotional expression for children, managers must set the tone for their teams. Moving beyond the superhero CEO archetype toward authentic leadership creates space for employees to bring their whole, authentic selves to work, fostering environments where diverse ideas flourish. By embracing systems thinking and recognizing the expertise of all members, organizations can develop the creativity, adaptability, and trust needed to thrive in today's volatile landscape. The future belongs to organizations that view human emotions and diverse perspectives not as weaknesses to be managed, but as sources of strength.