Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest (BK Business) by Peter Block

Author:Peter Block [Block, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2013-05-19T14:00:00+00:00

Offering Choice and Building Capability

The stewardship alternative is to require staff groups to operate as authentic service units. The core work units become their primary customers. As customers, line groups gain more control over the relationship and can obtain a unique response from the staff groups. Staff groups give up power in this process in exchange for the possibility of serving the organization in a more important way. Instead of maintaining consistency and control, their contribution is that of building capability. This needs to happen not out of altruism but in order to survive. In the longer run, it is the core work customers, not top management, who will keep staff groups alive and well.

In organizations under heavy cost pressure, even those protected by the power of the presidency will come under scrutiny. Only those who have won the support of middle managers will survive. The survival question will be “What value have you added to the process of delivering our product or service to our customers?” Work teams responsible for managing the core work process will be the ones whose answer counts. When given a choice, the line organization will not continue to buy policing, inspection, and caretaking services. If staff groups do not face this turning point themselves, someone else will do it for them, and not so gently.

No one has an easy time giving up power, especially after only recently acquiring it. We cannot, however, speak the language of local accountability and empowerment without asking the staff groups to follow suit in distributing more choice. Here are some of the elements required to make this work.

• Staff groups are no longer held responsible for implementing top management policy and strategy. Line management is responsible for implementing strategy, not staff groups. Staff groups implement strategy in the governance of their own affairs but not in the governance of others’ affairs.

• Staff groups define teams involved in the core work process as their primary customers. Staff units commit themselves to meeting the requirements of people close to the customer and close to the product or service. This means that each staff activity must say how it has direct impact on quality and cost delivered to the institution’s customers or on the people serving those customers. Top management becomes a secondary client. Top management needs support to deal with many constituencies. There are reporting requirements concerning finance, environmental protection, health and safety, and the like that staff groups are well equipped to handle. The key is to keep the staff groups out of the internal control and consistency business. If staff groups focus their service toward the lower levels, the demand for control and consistency will dry up. When top management needs control and consistency, let them ask it of their core workers instead of seeking it through the staff functions.

• The staff group’s primary role is to transfer their expertise to the line units. Education, support, and consultation are what replace policing and granting permission. If it is a

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