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Once the Leadership Team completes the steps and activities discussed earlier, it has a Leadership Perspective from which it can successfully participate within the agency’s incorporating environment. Through its Initiators and Authorizers, the agency develops and sustains sufficient resources and auspices to continue operations. Through its Implementers and agency Management, it assures services are in place to serve its clients and that those services and agency operations conform to accepted regulations, standards, and guidelines. Through the agency’s services structure and its Providers, the agency works to assure the help it provides is the help its clients need and deserve. Through its connection with and attention to potential clients and to those who may refer potential clients to the agency, the likelihood people in need will be better able to cope with their needs, problems, and vulnerabilities down the road increases. Further, everyone associated with the agency is better able to contribute to the success of other people and organizations in ways far beyond the agency’s narrow responsibilities. Only when all participants in the human services community succeed can an individual human services agency make a difference consistent with its full potential.
I hope the point has been made the Management Perspective and the Leadership Perspective are not the same and they both are required for agency excellence. I also hope the point is clear neither is more or less important than the other. Both are essential perspectives from which to pursue agency excellence. Let me reiterate one other critical point here.
Help is only helpful if it helps. Everything we do should support and further the success of our stakeholders in general and our clients in particular. Nothing we do should jeopardize their success or serve any other purpose. As I said in Chapter One, the point of developing a human services agency is to help people cope with the needs, problems, and vulnerabilities in their lives. Everything we do should further this outcome and nothing we do should interfere with achieving the outcome.
The standard is simple. Do the right things right, the first time, on time, every time, one client at a time. What is the right thing? This is also simple. Make sure the help we provide is help that truly helps. …
The posts in this series are excerpted from Ecological Human Services Management: An Organic Model For Practice.