Communityship

The cult of the heroic leader is one of the most persistent and damaging myths in management. Mintzberg spent decades arguing against it — the belief that organizations succeed or fail because of the qualities of the person at the top. The belief is not merely incorrect; it is structurally dangerous, concentrating accountability on an individual while obscuring the collective processes that actually produce organizational outcomes. Mintzberg proposed an alternative: communityship, a word he coined deliberately, aware that its awkwardness made a point. Leadership rolls off the tongue. Communityship does not. It requires explanation, and the need for explanation is the need for a fundamentally different way of thinking about how organizations work. Community is a structural condition — of belonging, contribution not from coercion but from care, quality of work reflecting quality of relationships, norms arising from shared commitment rather than authority.