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Who should be on the Management Team?
A successful Management Team member accepts and closely adheres to the guiding principles discussed above. Additionally, he or she exemplifies
cooperation, loyalty, caring, sharing, respect, trust, and integrity in everything he does both professionally and personally. Beyond these essential characteristics, the following questions are useful when assessing the functioning of Management Team members and others who want to join the Team.
Does he or she understand and value the agency’s mission? It is important to emphasize an agency’s mission relates to a future state. If there is a mission statement, but the statement does not specifically relate to a future state, the agency does not have a viable mission. There is nothing for Team members to usefully understand or value.
Further, the mission specifically commits the agency and the people associated with it to affecting a narrow outcome, i.e., improving the capacity of clients to cope with the needs, problems, and vulnerabilities in their lives. The current state focuses on clients who are not adequately coping, for whatever reason. The future state focuses on clients who are coping better, as a result of agency intervention. The agency mission is to enable clients to transition from the current state where they are not coping adequately to the future state where they are coping more adequately. However the transition is stated, Management Team members must both understand and value this outcome, this mission.
An additional point related to the agency’s mission requires careful and specific attention. In order for a Management Team member to understand and value the agency’s mission, he must be absolutely clear about who the client is. The client transitions from less adequately coping to more adequately coping and any confusion about who the client is quickly results in outcome drift that frequently goes unrecognized. For example, services intended to enable handicapped people to function more adequately can easily drift toward efforts to placate family members. Services are adjusted to make dealing with the handicapped person more comfortable for relatives. The result may be the handicapped person does not achieve the level of autonomy and independence he might otherwise achieve. In child protection settings, services intended to achieve safety, permanence, and well being for children may shift to extended efforts to habilitate the parents who abused or neglected the children. The result may be outcome drift emphasizing parent habilitation and de-emphasizing child protection. These and similar types of outcome drift are not uncommon and serve to reinforce the critical importance of unequivocal understanding and valuing of the agency’s client-centered mission.
Does he value the people associated with the agency and their contributions to agency excellence? The significance of this requirement is less than obvious. It would be easy to simply nod and move on to the next question. Instead, we need to remember the agency staff is only a sub-set of the people associated with the agency. The broad agency eco system includes potential clients, Initiators, Authorizers, Implementers, and the people associated with the external entities and organizations connected with the agency through point “0” in the Helping Triangle. Team members value all agency stakeholders internal and external and their individual contributions to agency excellence.
Does he see the agency’s goals as personal action steps? We can assume agency staff members work diligently to enable the agency to reach its goals. Were this not the case for individual staff members, they would no longer be part of the agency staff. For Management Team members, however, a higher standard applies. For them, simply doing what is expected to reach agency goals is insufficient. Team members are personally and professionally committed to more than merely reaching agency goals. They are committed to agency excellence. Doing whatever it takes to accomplish this outcome is a personal agenda for each Team member. Agency goals are but personal action steps on the way to excellence.
Is he responsive to the needs and interests of everyone associated with the agency? Everyone associated with the agency agency stakeholders includes agency staff but also includes everyone else associated with the agency through the Helping Triangle. Being responsive to the needs and interests of everyone in the agency eco system is a daunting expectation. Nonetheless, agency excellence is dependent on just that. Fortunately, no single Management Team member can or is expected to personally respond to the needs and interests of every stakeholder. Rather, he assures the agency responds to each stakeholder’s needs and interests. No exceptions. No Excuses.
If individual Management Team members cannot respond to the needs and interests of every stakeholder every time, how is it possible to be responsive to the needs and interests of everyone associated with the agency? Team members are committed to being personally responsive to every stakeholder, every time they become aware of a stakeholder need or interest. The member either responds personally or assures someone else associated with the agency responds appropriately. Further, the Management Team in conjunction with the Leadership Team continuously scans the agency eco system for opportunities to be responsive to stakeholders and assures all agency staff members do the same. This requires that this level of stakeholder responsiveness is expected of each staff member. Anything less from any staff member is simply unacceptable.
A cautionary note is important here. Being responsive to the needs and interests of stakeholders does not mean agency staff members always do whatever a stakeholder wants done. However, it does mean every agency staff member does carefully listen to every stakeholder every time and thoughtfully considers the stakeholder’s need or interest. Based on this consideration, the staff member then takes appropriate action, also considering the needs and interests of the agency. If the stakeholder need or interest is not going to receive affirmative consideration, the stakeholder does receive a timely and respectful explanation about why. Additionally, the Leadership Team is notified and the Team decides the best way to proceed from there with the stakeholder. The agency is not all things to all people but it is always responsive to everyone.
Does he understand his roles with others, where and how he fits-in? This question is more complex than it may at first seem. No one on the agency staff is permitted to define his or her role exclusively in terms of what he perceives to be his primary agency function. People usually reflect this orientation by responding to, What do you do for the agency? by saying something like I am a…. They complete the statement with words like supervisor, therapist, secretary, day treatment worker, adoption specialist, accountant, Director, social worker, case aide, or receptionist. The list of such self-defining terms can quickly become extensive, especially for larger human services agencies. When people define their roles this way, the agency becomes internally compartmentalized and functionally segmented.
Any of us who have spent more than a few months in a human services agency is familiar with how difficult it can be to get different groups or departments to work cooperatively. Even in fairly small agencies, the barriers to communication, coordinated effort, and integrated work with clients and stakeholders are frequently all but unmanageable. A major source of these issues is a lack of clarity, starting with members of the Management Team, with respect to their roles with others, how and where they fit-in. The underlying issue is agency staff members do not have a single role or function. Everyone has multiple roles and functions. Let’s explore this a little more here.
To be an agency staff member and more particularly to be a member of the Management Team, a successful candidate understands:
{{pause=0.6}} His primary role is to help clients function more successfully. If he does not contribute to this outcome, he is not needed as part of the staff.
{{pause=0.6}} His role is to respond to the needs and interest of stakeholders. If he does not contribute to this outcome, he is not needed as part of the staff.
{{pause=0.6}} His role is to contribute to agency excellence. If his work is not necessary to achieve this outcome, he is not needed as part of the agency staff.
{{pause=0.6}} His role is to support and facilitate the work of every other staff member. If he does not do this, he cannot remain on the agency staff.
{{pause=0.6}} His role is to also function as a supervisor, therapist, secretary, day treatment worker, adoption specialist, accountant, Director, social worker, case aide, receptionist, or so on. If he does not do this successfully, he cannot be an agency staff member.
Every staff member has multiple functions and sub-functions. Members of the Management Team also have multiple functions and sub-functions. Additionally, they are responsible for the meta functions required to assure all staff members understand their multiple roles with others, how and where they fit-in, and for assuring all staff members completely and consistently fulfill their multiple functions. The functioning of the internal eco system is dependent on the Management Team’s success here. …