Today's organizations are reliant on technology, information and expertise for success. Staff groups accountable for these functions must concentrate on personal accountability for their place at the corporate table. Traditionally, staff groups have lived with the constant threat that their function is an overhead-identified cost and that their function would sure to be the first eliminated in any kind of crunch.
A book entitled, "The Future of Staff Groups" by Joel P. Henning is a great business tool to be used to empower staff groups. This book instructs staff groups (groups within organizations that perform internal functions such as human resources, finance, legal, quality, information systems, and others) how to shed old models and responsibilities. This book speaks directly to the concerns of the staff groups and their clients, their managers, and the groups themselves. .
Henning breaks his book up into two parts. The first part focuses on "Intention and Theory". The chapters in the first section discuss topics such as: The Jarring Reality, A Business at Risk, Making an Offer, A Promise and a Guarantee, Taking a Stance, and Optimism, Hope, and Goodwill. The second part of the book focuses on "Application-Translating Intention into Conversations". The chapters in the second part of the book focus on Introducing Relevance, Timeliness, and Fit, Discovering the Possibilities, Further Opportunities for Discovery, Deliberating Relevance, Timeliness, and Fit, The Core Technologies of Service and The Path of Commitment.
There is no doubt that today's business climate is fierce. Competition is brutal and change is swift and unstoppable. Competitive advantage in any of today's markets presumes competence. To go beyond competence to dominate a market, a company needs to know more, create more, learn faster, and communicate better than the competition. This is the work that corporate staff groups were born for -- not 'just to do it', but to build within others the 'capability to do it'.
