How do we move beyond right and left to rebalance society?

We have a theme in our podcasts examining “what is the metacrisis?” I don’t have that answer but, for me, it involves a sense of overwhelm. How do we get things moving again? What’s our starting point?

In this episode I had the privilege of talking with legendary management thinker Henry Mintzberg about his ideas on rebalancing society. We do not come to any hard conclusions but, as someone who did grassroots work on building civil society once upon a time, I love his insight.

And after we talked, I was deeply inspired by a presentation from New_Public, in which they see opportunities (at slide 40) for AI to actually make it easier to organize and coordinate sustainably without everyone burning out. I’ll have to follow up with Henry on this!

Here is a transcript of our conversation:

The Balanced Society

A 4D Conversation with Henry Mintzberg

Nathan Hegedus Welcome to this edition of 4D Conversations. Today I am with Henry Mintzberg, one of the most influential management thinkers alive. His work on strategy, organizations, and leadership has shaped how we understand how institutions work in reality. Later in his career, he turned his attention to society itself and wrote Rebalancing Society: Radical Renewal Beyond Left, Right, and Center.

Henry, welcome and thank you for joining.

Henry Mintzberg It is my pleasure to be here, Nathan. Thank you.

Nathan Hegedus I thought I would start with the through line for your career, because your career started with a very hard look at how organizations actually work. What is the connection between that work and the rebalancing society work that you are doing now?

Henry Mintzberg The first thing I looked at, even before organizations, was how managers actually work. Sometimes people call me a contrarian, but I am not a contrarian at all. I don’t take counter positions for their own sake; I take them because the popular position just seems wrong to me. If I read textbook definitions saying that managers plan, organize, coordinate, and control, but then I sit in their offices and nothing they do looks like any of that, I say so.

In 1991, I visited Prague, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. This popular idea that capitalism had triumphed just seemed dead wrong to me. Capitalism didn’t triumph. Balance triumphed.

It wasn’t just about balance across two sectors, either. I wrote an article a year later making the point that it was the importance of a community sector that established true balance. Ever since then, I’ve looked at American history more closely. The secret to American success over the last 200 years was not just business being effective and government being constrained. It was also community activities that were absolutely key to the development of the country. They were just as important as business activities, something Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about back in the 1830s.

Eventually, I came to call this the plural sector. You don’t just have public and private, or economic and political—you have the social sector. I call it plural for two reasons. First, there is a huge variety of organizations within it. They are either owned by their members, like co-ops, or they are owned by nobody. When people ask what it means for an organization to be owned by nobody, look at Greenpeace, McGill University, or Harvard University. They are trusts of one kind or another. It is a massive sector, and using the word “plural” helps people see it taking its rightful place alongside the public and private sectors.

Nathan Hegedus Does the current moment seem different to you? There is democratic backsliding in places, the rise of AI, and we talk a lot at 4D Conversations about the meta crisis. Does the reality of 2026 change anything in the way you see things?

Henry Mintzberg You could say I saw it coming—not in these exact details, but one thing was quite clear. Capitalism became the be-all and end-all of everything in the West, and everywhere else except for a few communist countries. It was only a matter of time before that went out of balance, just the way communism went out of balance.

Under communism, business was weak, and communists did a great job of suppressing absolutely every plural sector community movement they could because it posed a threat to their power. Today, I am amazed that people in the United States don’t get it. They just don’t see that the power of business has become absolutely, unbelievably lopsided.

Nathan Hegedus And why do you think that is? What happened?

Henry Mintzberg It has been a long time coming. If you look at history, business has always sought to be dominant in the United States. There were battles right from the beginning—there is even a letter from Thomas Jefferson warning about business trying to take over the country. That advance moved steadily.

However, the plural sector used to be very strong in the United States. As de Tocqueville described, America was a deeply community-driven place. That community element weakened for a number of reasons, but I think the main culprit is technology. Every new technology that has come along has driven us out of community and deeper into ourselves.

When the automobile came along, you didn’t walk on the street or see your neighbors anymore. It’s like putting police officers in a squad car versus having them walk a beat—one is inherently more communal than the other. Then television arrived, and we ended up watching things at home alone. People stopped interacting socially.

I use a joke about modern highways. When somebody tailgates you on the highway, their attitude is “get off my road.” It is a deeply individualistic environment. But who tailgates you on a sidewalk when you are walking? Someone who is reading an iPhone. They bump right into you because they aren’t even looking at you. It is technology all the way.

Nathan Hegedus I am interested in the fact that the plural sector seems to have trouble organizing itself. Why do you think that is? In my own writing, I’ve looked at the work of Theda Skocpol and the fact that the modern plural sector in North America is run almost entirely by professional managers and professionals. Are they just unable to agree, or is the high level of professionalization an issue on its own?

Henry Mintzberg They certainly have a degree of competition with one another regarding fundraising and resources, which causes them to be wary of each other. But I think the fundamental issue is a question of mission.

The mission of Greenpeace is climate change. The mission of Doctors Without Borders is healthcare. The mission of Amnesty International is social justice. What they don’t realize, or don’t care to realize, is that they will get absolutely nowhere with any of those individual causes until we rebalance our societies. Because our societies are so lopsided, it fundamentally drives these problems.

Look at the COP climate conferences. They are “cop-out” conferences. They are jokes. Everybody flies around, comes home, and makes plans. But they don’t make four-year plans to match their four-year governments; they make 40-year plans. Then the next government comes along and cancels it. It would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

Nathan Hegedus So what is the work you are doing now? How do you address this?

Henry Mintzberg All I can do is write about this in a way that asks people to wake up and see what is actually happening. I am writing a pamphlet right now called Balance Now for the Sake of Survival, and I mean it literally. We will not survive this—whether it is wealth inequality putting us against each other, wars, climate change, or anything else. We will not survive a completely lopsided world.

Nathan Hegedus What would you recommend for the average person? How do they contribute to rebalancing society?

Henry Mintzberg I am mapping that out right now. People always ask, “What can I do?” But the “I” question must have a “we” answer. What I can do individually is get together with other people and work directly within our local communities to start changing things. That is the core of what I am writing about.

Nathan Hegedus Right, and I guess that is the trick. People get involved locally, but how do you actually scale that momentum up?

Henry Mintzberg I think the closest historical model we have is the Reformation. The framework I am using follows distinct stages:

* Individual Engagement: You read, you research, you realize what is going on, and you wake up.

* Communal Action: You get together with others to answer the “we” question. You engage in localized social initiatives.

* Institutional Reform: As you advance, you begin to reform your institutions. You don’t start with central leadership or top-down institutional reform; you reform the institutions once you have built a massive underlying movement.

* Global Consolidation: Finally, you consolidate those pieces globally.

Nathan Hegedus Do you have examples of countries or societies today that are operating with more balance?

Henry Mintzberg The Scandinavian countries and Canada are good examples, as are a lot of smaller nations functioning well—places like Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Botswana. They all face populist movements, but for the most part, they maintain balance. Canada, in particular, remains a very balanced place.

Nathan Hegedus Thinking back to de Tocqueville, he saw this immense, unique energy in American society. Is there any practical way to recover that energy today?

Henry Mintzberg I have a friend who is a business consultant in the States. He, another friend in Canada, and I get on regular calls together. He often tells me, “Henry, I feel so hopeless all the time, but when I get off these calls, I feel like there is hope.” Everyone needs to be able to find that feeling.

For a concrete blueprint of what this looks like, people can look up an article on my website—mintzberg.org/articles—about Coop Sapporo, a cooperative in Hokkaido, Japan. It is a phenomenal model for what I call a consolidated social economy.

Hokkaido, the big northern island, faces severe depopulation issues. When traditional businesses moved out because it was no longer profitable, Coop Sapporo moved in to fill the void. If a village doesn’t have a grocery store anymore, the co-op sends out mobile vans so people can shop. If there is no bank left in the village, they send out a van equipped with an ATM. They provide care from cradle to grave—handling everything from baby supplies and meals for school kids to funeral arrangements. They stepped in communally where the private sector failed.

Nathan Hegedus Wow, that is amazing. One last question, Henry: what, if anything, makes you genuinely optimistic right now about the future?

Henry Mintzberg Models like Coop Sapporo. My friend Jeremiah who finds hope after we have our conversations. And young kids who want to do something meaningful. There is always that energy out there. We just have to tap into it.

Nathan Hegedus Yeah. Well, that is great. Thank you so much, Henry.