Product Description

As a successful managing strategy for corporate. governmental, and nonprofit organizations, "stewardship" is, fundamentally, the spirit of partnership and service. Stewardship explains how to integrate the management of work and the doing of work to redistribute purpose and power within an organization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22518 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Block ( The Empowered Manager ), a professional in organizational training, runs riot with assumptions about human nature. Reaching for the stars, he constructs a productive business/industry model under which increasingly empowered employee/workers establish a new category of partnership and accountability that will render traditional management hierarchies almost obsolete. In simple terms (not notably indulged in here), sales and service personnel will so promote the interests of customers, distributors and production workforce that overpaid executives will forgo wealth and power, re-address priorities and bend moral attitudes to this end as stewards of the common good. Though there will still, admits Block, be a place for bosses, their role will radically change when the subordinate becomes "the customer of the boss." 20,000 first printing; $40,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Block, author of The Empowered Manager (Jossey-Bass, 1987), which offers an individualistic approach to "empowerment," here explains this movement on a much broader scale, offering his original and profound new view on running organizations. Block shows executives how to move from controlling and directing to his vision of shared governance, partnership, and total ownership of a business by all team members. This concept represents no less than a complete redistribution of power and a total restructuring, which will probably confound most present-day managers. Block transcends all extant leadership literature with this primary source on the organizational dynamics of the future, which will soon be copied. He has heard an as-yet-unknown muse and conceived the organizational structure of the 21st century. Guaranteed to be controversial; strongly recommended.
- Dale Farris, Groves, Tex.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Robert H. Waterman, Jr., author of The Renewal Factor and coauthor of In Search of Excellence
"Stewardship is visionary, hopeful, and practical. Block calls for a whole new way of thinking about the workplace-and then takes the reader through very tangible steps for getting there."

Customer Reviews

Unconventional ideas that not everyone will find useful, but great book . . .
I read this for an MBA class. Most of my classmates did not like this book and did not like the whole concept of servant leadership at all. Block's ideas and the changes he advocates are unconventional, however the book is written very well. I found the book easy to understand, easy to relate to and quite compelling as a result of Block's good use of concrete examples and mini "case studies" within the chapters. He does an effective and commendable job of demonstrating how to implement his ideas into an organization, a piece that is often lacking in books like this. The beginning is a little slow -- it was very theoretical and rather preachy for me.

However, it is a must read for anyone interested in leadership or management. Block's ideas present specific challenges to the old "command and control" corporate mentality that any maverick will find interesting to say the least. In the information age where knowledge workers are becoming an increasingly interesting challenge for leaders/managers, this is a great book in helping someone navigate the changing times.

Overall, the book is quite good -- I'm looking forward to reading more of Block's work as a result!

Choose service over self interest
This is from my blog which is why it reads this way.

I also read "Stewardship" by Peter Block. This is an excellent business book. The thesis of the book is empower people to make decisions. It also speaks about serving as a method of leadership. It talks about team interests as opposed to self interest (the belief being that a strong team is the best for self interest)

Interesting thesis. Choose serving over self interest because this is in your best self interest.

I agree with much of the thesis of the book although it is somewhat counter culture to our current culture at SYNNEX (and perhaps more close to the EMJ culture, the company I started in 1979 and sold to SYNNEX). A large part of my role at SYNNEX is to help mould culture.

Good culture can make a company succeed or fail. We are not quite where we want to be yet but are moving in the right direction. I know there are frustrations with where we are but I think if people really look at where we are relative to where we came from, they will appreciate that we are moving to where we need to go.

Yes!
I sat at the bookstore reading this book and nodding, saying "Yes, this author knows! He gets it, he gets it!"

Peter Block asks the important questions, gives pearls of wisdom highlighted among the content. He clearly understands what he is facing and moves the reader easily into seeing solutions which work and those which are simply adding more of the "old ways" of coercion, patriarchy and adding more "disease" to the organization instead of the RECREATION which will move the organization to its highest level possible.

This quote from Chapter 15 Sums up Block's attitude and approach... and had me want to stand on the table and applaud.

"If we took responsibility for our freedom, committed ourselves to service and had faith that our security lay within ourselves, we could stop asking the question, "HOW?" we would see that we have the answer. In every case the answer to the question, "How" is YES. It plays the location and the solution in the right place - with the question.

When will I finally choose adventure and accept the fact that there is no safe path?

I even smiled at Block's titling of the Bibliography as "Lost and Found."

Chapter 13: Recreating Our Organization Through Leadership is exceptionally strong as is Block's approach to the Cynics which inhabit (and have the ability to very simply destroy and dismantle ) positive growth.