| This book is about the current and future place of staff groupsHuman Resources, Finance, Information Systems, and their peersin large organizations. The future of these staff functions will depend on their direct and explicit contribution to positive business results. The intended audience includes members and managers of staff functions, but the book also speaks to all those who must deal with staff groups as clients or collaborators. The will and desire to write the book is the product of three observations formed and reinforced over two decades of working with staff groups. |
| Staff groups will have a decisive impact on the future success or failure of a business. The quality of business information, business decisions, new products, and relationships is largely in the hands of staff functions. Yet the power and influence of staff groups to determine success is little recognized. In many ways they are second-class citizens in the corporate communitythe bean counters, touchy feely people, computer nerds, or executioners for senior management. Business literature barely takes account of them. Yet it is their expertise, methods, practices, policies, and purposes that often determine the capacity of a business to know, decide, and create. Complaining, berating, blaming, ignoring, or outsourcing are not adequate responses to their influence or importance. |
| Staff groups and their clients do not know how to successfully talk and work with each other. Both sides are stuck in an antiquated and counterproductive relationship born of a different time and circumstance. Frequently the focus of clientsline managersis on owning the staff. Control is the point. In their view, a good staff assumes a posture of submission and compliance. Conversations confronting these issues occur on a daily basis, accompanied by frustration, anger, and resignation. It is all for naught. Owning and controlling staff groups is not the point. Pursuing control is irrelevant. The point is understanding how staff groups can and should contribute to business success. |
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