Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest

Stewardship was a provocative, even revolutionary, book when the first edition was published twenty years ago, and it remains as relevant and radical today as it was then. We still face the challenge of fostering ownership and accountability throughout our organizations. Despite all the evidence calling for profound change, most organizations still rely on patriarchy and control as their core form of governance. The result is that they stifle initiative and spirit and alienate people from the work they do. This in the face of an increasing need to find ways to be responsive to customers and the wider community. 

Peter Block insists that what is required is a dramatic shift in how we distribute power, privilege, and the control of money. “Stewardship,” he writes, “means giving people at the bottom and the boundaries of the organization choice over how to serve a customer, a citizen, a community. It is the willingness to be accountable for the well-being of the larger organization by operating in service, rather than in control, of those around us.”

Block has revised and updated the book throughout, including a new introduction addressing what has changed—and what hasn’t—in the twenty years since the book was published and a new chapter on applying stewardship to the common good of the wider community. He covers both the theory of stewardship (in particular how it ameliorates the shortcomings of traditional leadership) and the practice (how it transforms every function and department for the better). And he offers tactical advice as well on gearing up to implement these reforms. 

This is such a foundational and far-reaching rethinking of leadership, power, purpose, governance, and participation in organizations and communities that the ideas of this book will continue to open our minds and change our thinking for decades to come.

The concept of stewardship means choosing service over self-interest, in order to improve all areas of organizational governance and management. The book covers redesigning management practices, roles of staff groups, budgetary and financial practices, human resource practices, pay and performance appraisal systems. By replacing self-interest, dependency, and control with service, responsibility, and partnership, Block believes we can increase productivity and enable democracy and economic success to thrive in our organizations.

Peter Block is a partner in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed to build the skills outlined in his books. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Organization Development Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award and ASTD’s Award for Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning, and was named to Training Magazine’s HRD Hall of Fame. He is the author or coauthor of eight books.

Foreword author Steven Piersanti is president and publisher of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, an independent publisher based in San Francisco. Before founding Berrett-Koehler in 1992, Steve served as president and CEO of Jossey-Bass Publishers after previous service as copywriter, marketing director, editor, editorial director, and executive vice president.